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AMERICAN ADDRESSES 




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AMERICAN 

ADDRESSES 



BY 



JOSEPH H. CHOATE 



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NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1911 



Copyright, 1911, by 
The Century Co. 

Published, October, 1911 



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PREFACE 

THIS volume of addresses, delivered at vari- 
ous times and places in America and in- 
tended as a companion book to that which I 
published last year containing addresses deliv- 
ered by me in Great Britain, hardly requires any 
extended preface or explanation. 

Eanging through a period of nearly fifty years, 
from 1864 to 1911, they recall for the most part 
events and associations with which I was closely 
connected, and men whom I greatly honored and 
loved, and so in a way they form a part of my 
own life. 

I have given the first place to my kinsman, Ru- 
fus Choate, because of my personal relations to 
him and my great obligations to him, and because 
now, after the lapse of more than fifty years since 
his death, he still stands as the most famous and 
fascinating of American advocates. The lustre. 
of his fame is not dimmed and the charm of his 
personality is as familiar and as beloved as ever. 
Few men and women now living have ever seen 
or heard him, and his published orations and 
speeches give but a faint idea of the wonderful 
power of his presence and his voice, but the tradi- 
tion of his matchless eloquence will linger for 
generations to come. 



PREFACE 

At this distance of time I may venture to pub- 
lish the letter of introduction which he gave me 
when I went to New York, a homeless stranger, 
in 1855. He was then at the zenith of his fame 
and Mr. Evarts, to whom it was addressed, had 
already, although only thirty-seven years old, 
attained marked eminence in the profession. The 
letter, an exact fac-simile of which is reprinted 
here, is strongly characteristic of the writer's 
warm heart and tender sympathy and of his lofty 
standard of life. It did indeed ' ' smooth my first 
steps " and pave my way to fortune, as it resulted 
in my forty years' connection with Mr. Evarts, 
during which I had to live up to it as best I might. 

„ „ Boston 24 Sept. 1855 

My dear Mr. Evarts 

I beg to incur one other obligation to you by intro- 
ducing the bearer my friend and kinsman to your kind- 
ness. 

He is just admitted to our bar, was graduated at Cam- 
bridge with a very high reputation for scholarship and 
all worth, and comes to the practice of the law, I think, 
with extraordinary promise. He has decided to enroll 
himself among the brave and magnanimous of your bar, 
with a courage not unwarranted by his talents, character, 
ambition and power of labor. There is no young man 
whom I love better, or from whom I hope more or as 
much and if you can do anything to smooth the way to 
his first steps the kindness will be most seasonable and 
will yield all sorts of good fruits. 
Most truly 
Your servant and friend 

Rufus Choate. 
vi 



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PREFACE 

After reading this letter, who will wonder that 
gratitude and affection have prompted me to 
accord to him the first place in this volume of 
addresses? 

The adventures and achievements of naval 
heroes are among the most thrilling in human an- 
nals, and those of Admiral Farragut stand out in 
glowing colors. Americans will always honor his 
memory as one of the saviors of their country in 
the days of its deadliest peril. The simplicity of 
his character, his unsullied and lofty patriotism 
and* his unmatched exploits which restored the 
integrity of the Union by sea, and led the way to 
Grant's final victories on the land, make him one 
of the greatest and most brilliant figures in our 
history, and I greatly valued the invitation to pro- 
nounce his eulogy at the unveiling of St. Gau- 
den's statue in Madison Square, which will, I 
think, stand the test of time as that great sculp- 
tor's masterpiece. 

The wounds and scars of our Civil War are fast 
healing, and that frightful struggle has come to 
be looked upon as the only means under Provi- 
dence of curing the one fatal defect in our 
Constitution which permitted slavery, and of 
rebuilding upon imperishable foundations the 
Nation which in the fullness of time must 
be t^e greatest of all. But while the war 
lasted its horrors blighted the lives of the 
women on both sides. The women of the 
South suffered anguish and misery unspeakable, 
but those of the North were not a whit behind 

vii 



PEEFACE 

them in their ardent and patriotic devotion. It 
was their enthusiasm and exertions that led to 
the formation of the United States Sanitary Com- 
mission, which, throughout the war, did such 
splendid service for the relief of the sick and 
wounded, under the presidency of Dr. Bellows of 
immortal memory, and sustained its great efforts 
from the beginning to the end. In April, 1864, 
when the Government was straining every nerve 
to bring the war to a close, and the Sanitary Com- 
mission was in great need, the women of New 
York organized the famous Sanitary Fair, which 
proved to be a wonderful financial success. Gen- 
eral Dix presided at the opening and breathed the 
same spirit as he did in 1861, when he wrote, ' ' If 
any man attempts to haul down the American flag 
shoot him on the spot ! ' ' and I esteemed it a great 
privilege to speak on that occasion for the women 
whose labors brought to that Commission a gen- 
erous sum of money, encouraged the Government 
itself, and inspired to new exertions our strug- 
gling heroes at the front. 

The breaking up of the Tweed Eing in 1871 by 
a universal uprising of the city of New York, and 
the rescue of the municipal government and treas- 
ury from the grasp of that infamous band of rob- 
bers, after its depredations had amounted to 
many millions, has been too often told to need 
repetition here. The people of the city, without 
distinction of party, vested all their power for 
that purpose in the Committee of Seventy citi- 
zens, of which I had the honor to be a member. 

viii 



PREFACE 

I was made chairman of its Sub-committee on 
Elections, whose duty it was to select candidates 
for all the offices to be filled in November, and to 
conduct the campaign at that election. Although 
we were all amateurs and wholly unpracticed in 
political arts, that duty was successfully per- 
formed, and resulted in the triumph of the people 
at the polls and the restoration for the time being 
of honest municipal government. My address in 
making the report of that committee at the mass 
meeting of the Cooper Institute in October fairly 
reflected the public sentiment in that fearful 
crisis. Although I fear that most of my colleagues 
on the committee are long since dead, I have 
thought that a portion of that address would still 
be of interest to those who believe that the only 
way to preserve our great city from corruption, is 
for all the citizens at all times to perform their 
public duty, whatever sacrifice of time and private 
business may be necessary. 

" The Young Lawyer/ ' " Our Profession," 
' ' Trial by Jury ' ' and- ' ' The English Bar ' ' were 
grateful contributions to the noble profession to 
which I owe so much. The immense and constant 
service which it has rendered in the creation and 
conservation of the national spirit, and in the 
making and administration of the laws, entitle it 
to the grateful recognition of the nation, which 
I hope it will always receive in spite of the fre- 
quent calumnies to which from time to time it is 
subjected. 

My native city, old Salem, in Massachusetts, is 

ix 



PEEFACE 

very dear to me. My ancestors were among its 
inhabitants from the very beginning, even before 
Endicott landed there with the first " founders.' ' 
There is no city in the land that cherishes more 
quaint traditions and more interesting historical 
associations, or which can successfully challenge 
the enterprise and courage of its sailors and mer- 
chants who helped to lay the foundations of 
American commerce. Hawthorne, in his " Twice 
Told Tales," and " The House of the Seven Ga- 
bles," has celebrated it in the most loyal and 
loving spirit, and is himself the brightest gem in 
its crown, and when I was invited as a son of Sa- 
lem, after an absence of more than a quarter of 
a century, to take part in the celebration of the 
250th anniversary of the landing of Governor 
Endicott, I responded gladly for the Salem people 
abroad and did my best to recall some of the 
charming associations of our old home and the 
spirit of its unique history. 

Harvard College has a wonderful hold upon its 
sons. They are proud of its history and of the 
service which it has rendered to the country as 
a leader in the great cause of education, and they 
are vain enough to point to the names in its cata- 
logue since 1642, which have been identified with 
every great national cause of freedom, progress 
and light. They never tire of sounding its 
praises, sometimes, perhaps, in a provincial, but 
always in a loyal spirit. As I have received the 
full measure of its honors and owe it an immeas- 
urable debt of gratitude, I have not hesitated to 



PREFACE 

reprint brief addresses delivered at two memor- 
able Commencement gatherings of Harvard grad- 
uates. 

In 1883, when General Butler was Governor of 
Massachusetts, the corporation of the College fol- 
lowing its custom from time immemorial, of rec- 
ognizing the newly elected chief magistrate of the 
Commonwealth, had voted to confer on him the 
degree of Doctor of Laws, but this had been ve- 
toed by the Board of Overseers, whose consent 
was necessary. This led to a great deal of agita- 
tion and discussion among the Alumni, and much 
excitement ensued. 

General Butler had announced his intention of 
attending the Commencement exercises in his offi- 
cial capacity, as all his predecessors since the 
foundation of the college had done, but so strong 
was the feeling against him that the elected Presi- 
dent of the Alumni, who had long been his severe 
political critic and adversary, refused to serve, 
and as vice-president I was called on to take his 
place. An unusual throng of the graduates at- 
tended, and much apprehension was expressed 
lest the Governor might improve the occasion by 
way of retaliation, to say something unkind of 
the college, as he had been known to. do before, 
and so everybody expected a disturbance or at 
least something resembling it. But their expecta- 
tions were doomed to a happy disappointment. 
In opening the proceedings, I made a conciliatory 
speech, appealing to that close bond of loyalty 
and mutual friendship which had always 

xi 



PREFACE 

united the College and the Commonwealth. His 
Excellency then arose and fairly turned the tables 
upon everybody, by making an equally friendly 
and a very dignified reply, but he confided to me 
afterwards that it was quite a different speech 
from that which he had expected to make when 
lie entered the hall. He was certainly true to the 
traditions of his office, and his audience treated 
him with the utmost courtesy. 

It was again my good fortune in 1885, in the 
absence of Phillips Brooks in Europe, to preside 
at the Commencement exercises at which a great 
gathering of the Alumni assembled to welcome 
James Russell Lowell on his return from the 
English mission. I had not at that time the 
slightest idea that I should long afterwards suc- 
ceed him as Ambassador at that post. He had 
been continuously absent for eight years in the 
diplomatic service, in which he had added vastly 
to his already great prestige and distinction. He 
was much the most distinguished of the living 
graduates of Harvard, and his return home after 
such a long absence was naturally recognized as a 
signal event. Many of the most eminent of his 
fellows had assembled to greet him, and great 
was the joy of the occasion. His brilliant career 
as a poet, his renown as a man of letters, his 
services to the cause of freedom, and his success 
in upholding the honor and dignity of his country 
abroad, all appealed most strongly to our hearts, 
and we joined in giving him an extraordinary 
welcome. 

xii 



PREFACE 

The celebration of the centennial of the Hasty 
Pudding Club was another interesting occasion 
at Harvard, where, since the days of its most dis- 
tinguished founder, Horace Binney, it had been 
the centre of undergraduate fun and recreation. 
I am not sure but that some of its members have 
derived as much benefit from its associations as 
from the more serious curriculum of the Uni- 
versity, and am certain that they cherish a livelier 
recollection of them. At all events, the centen- 
nial of the Club was deemed a suitable occasion 
for its choicest spirits to come together, and make 
good its renowned motto of " concordia discors," 
and when I was called upon to lead their revels, 
I was by no means reluctant to do so. 

The Union League Club, during the Civil War 
(which brought it into being as a champion of 
" Unconditional Loyalty ") and for many years 
afterwards, was more devoted to public affairs 
than it has been of late, and was often the scene 
of warm demonstrations of public spirit. No 
heartier greeting was ever extended by it on be- 
half of the whole country, than to those brave 
Englishmen who had had the wit to appreciate 
and the courage to support our cause of Liberty 
and Union, when Lincoln was struggling divinely 
to maintain it, and when almost all the world 
seemed to be banded against us. During my term 
of service as President of the club, we had the 
honor of welcoming two of these truly historical 
characters, Lord Houghton and the Hon. William 
E. Forster, and I was proud to be the spokesman 

xiii 



PKEFACE 

of the club in thanking them for befriending us 
when we needed friends so sorely. No apology 
seems needed, therefore, for introducing here the 
address of welcome to Lord Houghton, who as 
Monckton Milne s had found in America hosts of 
readers and admirers, even before he championed 
our cause. 

In 1905, after fifty years' service in the New 
England Society (which strives to keep alive the 
traditions and the principles of the Pilgrim and 
the Puritan founders of Massachusetts), I was 
asked, as the sole survivor of the members pres- 
ent who had attended the celebration of 1855, to 
give an account of that occasion. It had occurred 
at a critical point in our history, half way be- 
tween the compromise measures of 1850 and the 
election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The fatal 
Kansas-Nebraska bill had been passed and was 
fast dividing the country into two hostile camps, 
the one determined by force, if need be, to resist 
the further extension of slavery, the other by the 
same means to extend its domination over our 
whole area. But the spirit and the hope of com- 
promise were still warmly cherished by the con- 
servative classes. On that occasion the presence 
and eloquence of two noble citizens, Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes and the Eeverend Dr. John Pier- 
pont, a glorious champion of Liberty, had made 
the day memorable, and I was glad that I had 
preserved a record of it. 

My welcome home by the Pilgrims touched me 
quite as deeply as any distinction conferred upon 

xiv 



PREFACE 

me abroad, and I have thought it not immodest 
to include my address on that occasion. 

I also wished to record the gracious generosity 
and good will of Earl Grey, Governor General of 
Canada, who, at my suggestion, restored to our 
nation the portrait of Franklin, which in 1777 was 
taken by John Andre from Franklin's house in 
Philadelphia, and which had hung as a precious 
possession in Earl Grey's ancestral home in Nor- 
thumberland for one hundred and thirty years. 

The story of Florence Nightingale's life was 
really told for the benefit of all the trained nurses 
of America, who had assembled to celebrate the 
semicentennial of the foundation by her of the 
first training school for nurses, by which she con- 
ferred countless blessings on mankind. 

The rest of the addresses, tributes to such great 
citizens as Phillips Brooks, Dr. Richard Salters 
Storrs, James Coolidge Carter, Carl Schurz and 
Charles Follen McKim need no further intro- 
duction from me. 

I fully realize the miscellaneous character of 
these addresses, all of which were prepared in 
" moments snatched from the iron grasp of an 
engrossing profession," and I commit them to 
the indulgent favor of such of my friends as may 
be interested in their various subjects. 

Joseph H. Choate. 

Stockbridge, Mass., September 14, 1911. 



XV 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface v 

Rupus Choate 1 

Address at the unveiling of French's statue of Bufus 
Choate in the Court House, Boston, October 15, 
1898. 

Admiral Farragut 27 

Address at the unveiling of St. Gaudens' Statue of Ad- 
miral Farragut in New York, May 25, 1881. 

The Metropolitan Sanitary Fair .... 51 
Address at the opening of the Metropolitan Sanitary 
Fair in New York, April 5, 1864. 

The Tweed Ring 61 

Address at the meeting of the Committee of Seventy at 
Cooper Institute, New York, November 3, 1871. 

Lord Houghton 77 

Address at the reception given to Lord Houghton, by 
the Union League Club in New York, November 23, 

1875. 

The Young Lawyer 85 

Address at the Nineteenth Annual Commencement of 
the Columbia Law School, New York, May 16, 1878. 

Salem 99 

Address at the Fifth Half-Century Anniversary of the 
Landing of John Endicott, at Salem, Massachusetts, 
Salem, September 18, 1878. 

Harvard Commencement, 1883 113 

Address at the Harvard Alumni Dinner in Memorial 
Hall, on Commencement Day, Cambridge, 1883. 

xvii 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Harvard Commencement, 1885 123 

Address at Cambridge to the Alumni of Harvard, June 

24, 1885, on the occasion of Mr. Lowell's return 
from England. 

Phillips Brooks 135 

Address at Music Mall, New York, at the Memorial 
Service to Phillips Brooks, February 16, 1893. 

The Hasty Pudding Club 143 

Address at the Club's Centennial, November 24, 1895. 

Earl Grey and Franklin's Portrait .... 153 

Address at the dinner of the Pilgrims of the United 
States to Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada, 
New York, March 31, 1906. 

Dr. Storrs's Jubilee 163 

Address at Br. Storrs's Jubilee, Brooklyn, November 

25, 1896. 

Our Profession 175 

An address before the Chicago Bar Association, Friday, 
February 4, 1898. 

Trial by Jury 197 

Address before the American Bar Association, Saratoga, 
August 18, 1898. 

Return to America 243 

Address at the Banquet of the Pilgrims Society of New 
York, in Honor of Mr. Choate's return to America, 
June 9, 1905. 

The New England Society in 1855 .... 253 
Address before the New England Society in the City of 
New York, December 22, 1905. 

James Coolidge Carter 271 

Address before the Bar Association of the City of New 
York, March 13, 1906. 

Carl Schurz 297 

Address at the Schurz Memorial Meeting, New York, 
November 21, 1906. 

xviii 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The English Bar 305 

Address before the New York State Bar Association, at 
Albany, N. Y., January 16, 1907. 

Charles Follen McKim 325 

Address at the McKim Memorial Meeting, at the New 
Theatre, New York, November 23, 1909. 

Florence Nightingale 341 

Address at the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of 
the First Training School for Nurses, New York, May 
18, 1910. 



XIX 



KUFUS CHOATE 



RUFUS CHOATE 

Address delivered at the unveiling of French's statue of Bufus 
Choate in the Court House, Boston, October 15, 1898. 

I DEEM it a very great honor to have been in- 
vited by the Suffolk Bar Association to take 
part on this occasion in honor of him who still 
stands as one of the most brilliant ornaments of 
the American Bar in its annals of two centuries. 
Bearing his name and lineage, and owing to him, 
as I do, more than to any other man or men — to 
his example and inspiration, to his sympathy and 
helping hand — whatever success has attended my 
own professional efforts, I could not refuse the 
invitation to come here to-day to the dedication 
of this statue, which shall stand for centuries to 
come, and convey to the generations who knew 
him not some idea of the figure and the features 
of Eufus Choate. Neither bronze nor marble can 
do him justice. Not Eembrandt himself could re- 
produce the man as we knew and loved him — for 
until he lay upon his death-bed he was all action, 
the " noble, divine, godlike action " of the ora- 
tor — and the still life of art could never really 
represent him as he was. 

I am authorized, at the outset, to express for the 
surviving children of Mr. Choate their deep sense 
of gratitude to the generous donor of this statue 
of their honored father, and their complete appre- 
ciation of the sentiment which has inspired the 

3 



BUFUS CHOATE 

city and the court to accept it as a public treasure, 
and to give it a permanent home at the very gates 
of the Temple of Justice, at whose shrine he wor- 
shipped They desire also to express publicly on 
this occasion their admiration of the statue itself, 
as a work of art, and a faithful portrait, in form 
and feature, of the living man as he abides in 
their loving memory. The City of Boston is 
certainly indebted to Mr. French for his signal 
skill in thus adding a central figure to that group 
of great orators whom its elder citizens once 
heard with delight — Webster, Choate, Everett, 
Mann, Sumner and Garrison. In life, they divided 
the sentiments and applause of her people. In 
death, they share the honors of her Pantheon. 

It is forty years since he strode these ancient 
streets with majestic step — forty years since the 
marvellous music of his voice was heard by the 
living ear — and those of us who, as students and 
youthful disciples, followed his footsteps, and 
listened to his eloquence, and almost wor- 
shipped his presence, whose ideal and idol he 
was, are already many years older than he lived 
to be; but there must be a few still living, and 
present here to-day, who were in the admiring 
crowds that hung with rapture on his lips — in 
the courts of justice, in the densely packed assem- 
bly, in the Senate, in the Constitutional Conven- 
tion, or in Faneuil Hall consecrated to Freedom — 
and who can still recall, among life's most cher- 
ished memories, the tones of that matchless voice, 
that pallid face illuminated with rare intelligence, 

4 



RUFUS CHOATE 

the flashing glance of his dark eye, and the light 
of his bewitching smile. But, in a decade or two 
more, these lingering witnesses of his glory and 
his triumphs will have passed on, and to the next 
generation he will be but a name and a statue, 
enshrined in fame's temple with Cicero and 
Burke, with Otis and Hamilton and Webster, with 
Pinkney and Wirt, whose words and thoughts he 
loved to study and to master. 

Many a noted orator, many a great lawyer, has 
been lost in oblivion in forty years after the grave 
closed over him, but I venture to believe that the 
Bar of Suffolk, aye, the whole Bar of America, 
and the people of Massachusetts, have kept the 
memory of no other man alive and green so long, 
so vividly and so lovingly, as that of Eufus 
Choate. Many of his characteristic utterances 
have become proverbial, and the flashes of his wit, 
the play of his fancy and the gorgeous pictures 
of his imagination are the constant themes of 
reminiscence, wherever American lawyers assem- 
ble for social converse. What Mr. Dana so well 
said over his bier is still true to-day: "When 
as lawyers we meet together in tedious hours and 
seek to entertain ourselves, we find we do better 
with anecdotes of Mr. Choate, than on our own 
original resources. ' ' The admirable biography of 
Professor Brown, and his arguments, so far as 
they have been preserved, are text books in the 
profession — and so the influence of his genius, 
character and conduct is still potent and far 
reaching in the land. 

5 



RUFUS CHOATE 

You will not expect me, upon such an occasion, 
to enter upon any narrative of his illustrious ca- 
reer, so familiar to you all, or to undertake any 
analysis of those remarkable powers which made 
it possible. All that has been done already by 
many appreciative admirers, and has become a 
part of American literature. I can only attempt, 
in a most imperfect manner, to present a few of 
the leading traits of that marvellous personality, 
which we hope that this striking statue will help 
to transmit to the students, lawyers and citizens 
who, in the coming years, shall throng these 
portals. 

How it was that such an exotic nature, so ar- 
dent and tropical in all its manifestations, so truly 
southern and Italian in its impulses, and at the 
same time so robust and sturdy in its strength, 
could have been produced upon the bleak and 
barren soil of our northern cape, and nurtured 
under the chilling blasts of its east winds, is a 
mystery insoluble. Truly, "this is the Lord's do- 
ing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. ' ' In one of 
his speeches in the Senate, he draws the distinction 
between " the cool and slow New England men, 
and the mercurial children of the sun, who sat 
down side by side in the presence of Washington, 
to form our more perfect union. ,, If ever there 
was a mercurial child of the sun, it was himself 
most happily described. I am one of those who 
believe that the stuff that a man is made of has 
more to do with his career than any education or 
environment. The greatness that is achieved, or 

6 



EUFUS CHOATE 

is thrust upon some men, dwindles before that of 
him who is born great. His horoscope was pro- 
pitious. The stars in their courses fought for 
him. The birthmark of genius, distinct and in- 
effaceable, was on his brow. He came of a long 
line of pious and devout ancestors, whose living 
was as plain as their thinking was high. It was 
from father and mother that he derived the flame 
of intellect, the glow of spirit and the beauty of 
temperament that were so unique. 

And his nurture to manhood was worthy of the 
child. It was "the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord." From that rough pine cradle, which is 
still preserved in the room where he was born, to 
his premature grave at the age of fifty-nine, it 
was one long course of training and discipline of 
mind and character, without pause or rest. It 
began with that well-thumbed and dog's-eared 
Bible from Hog Island, its leaves actually worn 
away by the pious hands that had turned them, 
read daily in the family from January to Decem- 
ber, in at Genesis and out at Eevelations every 
two years; and when a new child was born in 
the household, the only celebration, the only fes- 
tivity, was to turn back to the first chapter, and 
read once more how ' ' in the beginning God crea- 
ted the heaven and the earth," and all that in 
them is. This Book, so early absorbed and never 
forgotten, saturated his mind and spirit more 
than any other, more than all other books com- 
bined. It was at his tongue's end, at his fingers' 
ends — always close at hand until those last lan- 

7 



RUFUS CHOATE 

guid hours at Halifax, when it solaced his dying 
meditations. You can hardly find speech, argu- 
ment or lecture of his, from first to last, that is 
not sprinkled and studded with biblical ideas and 
pictures, and biblical words and phrases. To 
him the book of Job was a sublime poem. He 
knew the Psalms by heart, and dearly loved the 
prophets, and above all Isaiah, upon whose gor- 
geous imagery he made copious drafts. He pon- 
dered every word, read with most subtle keen- 
ness, and applied with happiest effect. One day 
coming into the Crawford House, cold and shiver- 
ing — and you remember how he could shiver — he 
caught sight of the blaze in the great fireplace, 
and was instantly warm before the rays could 
reach him, exclaiming, " Do you remember that 
verse in Isaiah, 'Aha! I am warm. I have seen 
the fire"? " and so his daily conversation was 
marked. 

And upon this solid rock of the Scriptures he 
built a magnificent structure of knowledge and 
acquirement, to which few men in America have 
ever attained. History, philosophy, poetry, fic- 
tion, all came as grist to his mental mill. But 
with him, time was too precious to read any 
trash ; he could winnow the wheat from the chafr" 
at sight, almost by touch. He sought knowledge, 
ideas, for their own sake, and for the language 
in which they were conveyed. I have heard a 
most learned jurist gloat over the purchase of the 
last sensational novel, and have seen a most dis- 
tinguished bishop greedily devouring the stories 

8 



RUFUS CHOATE 

of Gaboriau one after another, but Mr. Choate 
seemed to need no such counter-irritant or blis- 
ter, to draw the pain from his hurt mind. Busi- 
ness, company, family, sickness — nothing could 
rob him of his one hour each day in the company 
of illustrious writers of all ages. How his whole 
course of thought was tinged and embellished 
with the reflected light of the great Greek orators, 
historians and poets; how Roman history, fresh 
in his mind as the events of yesterday, supplied 
him with illustrations and supports for his own 
glowing thoughts and arguments, all of you who 
have either heard him or read him know. 

But it was to the great domain of English lit- 
erature that he daily turned for fireside com- 
panions, and really kindred spirits. As he said in 
a letter to Sumner, with whom his literary fra- 
ternity was at one time very close: " Mind that 
Burke is the fourth Englishman — Shakespeare, 
Bacon, Milton, Burke ": and then in one of those 
dashing outbursts of playful extravagance, which 
were so characteristic of him, fearing that Sum- 
ner, in his proposed review, might fail to do full 
justice to the great ideal of both, he adds : ' ' Out 
of Burke might be cut 50 Mackintoshes, 175 Ma- 
caulays, 40 Jeffreys and 250 Sir Robert Peels, 
and leave him greater than Pitt and Fox to- 
gether. ' ' In the constant company of these great 
thinkers and writers he revelled, and made their 
thoughts his own; and his insatiable memory 
seemed to store up all things committed to it, 
as the books not in daily use are stacked away in 

9 



KUFUS CHOATE 

your public library, so that at any moment, with 
notice or without, he could lay his hand straight- 
way upon them. What was once imbedded in the 
gray matter of his brain did not lie buried there, 
as with most of us, but grew and flourished and 
bore fruit. What he once read he seemed never 
to forget. 

This love of study became a ruling passion in 
his earliest youth. To it he sacrificed all that the 
youth of our day — even the best of them — con- 
sider indispensable, and especially the culture and 
training of the body ; and when we recall his pale 
face, worn and lined as it was in his later years, 
one of his most pathetic utterances is found in a 
letter to his son at school: " I hope that you are 
well and studious, and among the best scholars. 
If this is so, I am willing you should play every 
day till the blood is ready to burst from your 
cheeks. Love the studies that will make you wise, 
useful and happy when there shall be no blood at 
all to be seen in your cheeks or lips. ' ' He never 
rested from his delightful labors — and that is the 
pity of it — he took no vacations. Except for one 
short trip to Europe, when warned of a possible 
breakdown in 1850, an occasional day at Essex, 
a three days* journey to the White Mountains was 
all that he allowed himself. Eeturning from 
such an outing in the summer of 1854, on which 
it was my great privilege to accompany him, he 
said: " That is my entire holiday for this year." 
So that when he told Judge Warren so playfully 
that ' * The lawyer 's vacation is the space between 

10 



RUFUS CHOATE 

the question put to a witness and his answer," it 
was of himself almost literally true. Would that 
he had realized his constant dream of an ideal cot- 
tage in the old walnut grove in Essex, where he 
might spend whole summers with his books, his 
children and his thoughts. 

His splendid and blazing intellect, fed and en- 
riched by constant study of the best thoughts of 
the great minds of the race, his all-persuasive elo- 
quence, his teeming and radiant imagination, 
whirling his hearers along with it, and sometimes 
overpowering himself, his brilliant and sportive 
fancy, lighting up the most arid subjects with the 
glow of sunrise, his prodigious and never-failing 
memory, and his playful wit, always bursting 
forth with irresistible impulse, have been the sub- 
ject of scores of essays and criticisms, all strug- 
gling with the vain effort to describe and crystal- 
lize the fascinating and magical charm of his 
speech and his influence. 

But the occasion and the place remind me that 
here to-day we have chiefly to do with him as the 
lawyer and the advocate, and all that I shall pre- 
sume very briefly to suggest is, what this statue 
will mean to the coming generations of lawyers 
and citizens. 

And first, and far above his splendid talents 
and his triumphant eloquence, I would place the 
character of the man — pure, honest, delivered 
absolutely from all the temptations of sordid and 
mercenary things, aspiring daily to what was 
higher and better, loathing all that was vulgar 

11 



KUFUS CHOATE 

and of low repute, simple as a child, and tender 
and sympathetic as a woman. Emerson most 
truly says that character is far above intellect, and 
this man's character surpassed even his exalted 
intellect, and, controlling all his great endow- 
ments, made the consummate beauty of his life. 
I know of no greater tribute ever paid to a suc- 
cessful lawyer, than that which he received from 
Chief Justice Shaw — himself an august and serene 
personality, absolutely familiar with his daily 
walk and conversation — in his account of the ef- 
fort that was made to induce Mr. Choate to give 
up his active and exhausting practice, and to take 
the place of professor in the Harvard Law School, 
made vacant by the death of Mr. Justice Story — 
an effort of which the Chief Justice, as a member 
of the corporation of Harvard, was the principal 
promoter. After referring to him, then, in 1847, 
as " the leader of the Bar in every department 
of forensic eloquence," and dwelling upon the 
great advantages which would accrue to the school 
from the profound legal learning which he pos- 
sessed, he said: " In the case of Mr. Choate, it 
was considered quite indispensable that he should 
reside in Cambridge, on account of the influence 
which his genial manners, his habitual presence, 
and the force of his character, would be likely to 
exert over the young men, drawn from every 
part of the United States to listen to his instruc- 
tions." 

What richer tribute could there be to personal 
and professional worth, than such words from 

12 



EUFUS CHOATE 

such lips? He was the fit man to mould the char- 
acters of the youth, not of the city or the State 
only, but of the whole nation. So let the statue 
stand as notice to all who seek to enter here, that 
the first requisite of all true renown in our noble 
profession — renown not for a day or a life only, 
but for generations — is Character. 

And next I would point to it as a monument to 
self -discipline ; and here he was indeed without a 
rival. You may search the biographies of all the 
great lawyers of the world, and you will find none 
that surpassed, I think none that approached him, 
in this rare quality and power. The advocate who 
would control others must first, last and always 
control himself. ' ' Every educated man, ' ' he once 
said, " should remember that ' great parts are a 
great trust,' " and, conscious of his talents and 
powers, he surely never forgot that. You may 
be certain that after his distinguished college 
career at Dartmouth — first always where there 
was none second — after all that the law school, 
and a year spent under the tuition of William 
Wirt, then at the zenith of his fame, could lend to 
his equipment, and after the five years of patient 
study in his office at Danvers, where he was the 
only lawyer, he brought to the subsequent actual 
practice of his profession an outfit of learning, 
of skill and research, which most of us would 
have thought sufficient for a lifetime ; but with him 
it was only the beginning. His power of labor 
was inexhaustible, and down to the last hour of 
his professional life he never relaxed the most 

13 



RUFUS CHOATE 

acute and searching study, not of the case in hand 
only, but of the whole body of the law, and of 
everything in history, poetry, philosophy and lit- 
erature that could lend anything of strength or 
lustre to the performance of his professional 
duties. His hand, his head, his heart, his imagi- 
nation were never out of training. 

Think of a man already walking the giddy 
heights of assured success, already a Senator 
of the United States from Massachusetts, or 
even years afterwards, when the end of his 
professional labors was already in sight, 
schooling himself to daily tasks in law, in 
rhetoric, in oratory, seeking always for the 
actual truth, and for the " best language " in 
which to embody it — the "precisely one right 
word ' ' by which to utter it — think of such a man, 
with all his ardent taste for the beautiful in 
every domain of human life, going through the 
grinding work of taking each successive volume 
of the Massachusetts Reports, as they came out, 
down to the last year of his practice, and making 
a brief in every case in which he had not been 
himself engaged, with new researches to see how 
he might have presented it, and thus to keep up 
with the procession of the law. Verily, " all 
things are full of labor ; man cannot utter it : the 
eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled 
with hearing.' ' 

So let no man seek to follow in his footsteps, 
unless he is ready to demonstrate, in his own per- 
son, that infinite work is the only touchstone of the 

14 



RUFUS CHOATE 

highest standing in the law, and that the sluggard 
and the slothful who enter here must leave all 
hope behind. 

Again we hail this statue, which shall stand 
here as long as bronze shall endure, as the fit rep- 
resentative of one who was the perfect embodi- 
ment of absolute loyalty to his profession, in the 
highest and largest and noblest sense; and, if I 
might presume to speak for the whole American 
Bar, I would say that in its universal judgment 
he stands in this regard pre-eminent, yes, fore- 
most still. Truly, he did that pious homage to 
the Law which Hooker exacted for her from all 
things in Heaven and Earth, and was governed 
by that ever-present sense of debt and duty to the 
profession of which Lord Bacon spoke. He en- 
tered her Courts as a High Priest, arrayed and 
equipped for the most sacred offices of the Temple. 
He belonged to the heroic age of the Bar, and, 
after the retirement of Webster, he was chief 
among its heroes. He was the centre of a group of 
lawyers and advocates, the ablest and the strong- 
est we have known, by whose aid the chief tribu- 
nal of this ancient commonwealth administered 
justice so as to give law to the whole country. 
Such tributes as Loring and Curtis and Dana lav- 
ished upon his grave can never wither. Each 
one of them had been his constant antagonist in 
the great arena, and each could say with 

' ' experto credite quantus 

In clypeum assurgat, quo turbine torqueat 

hastam." 

15 



EUFUS CHOATE 

One after the other, they portrayed in words 
not to be forgotten his fidelity to the Court, to 
the client and to the law, his profound learning, 
his invincible logic, his rare scholarship and his 
persuasive eloquence, his uniform deference to 
the Court and to his adversaries — and more and 
better than all these — what those specially inter- 
ested in his memory cherish as a priceless treas- 
ure — his marvellous sweetness of temper, which 
neither triumph nor defeat nor disease could ruf- 
fle, his great and tender and sympathetic heart, 
which made them, and the whole bench and bar, 
love him in life, and love him still. 

He magnified his calling with all the might of 
his indomitable powers. Following the law as a 
profession, or, as Judge Sprague so justly said, 
"as a science, and also as an art," he aimed 
always at perfection for its own sake, and no 
thought of money, or of any mercenary considera- 
tion, ever touched his generous and aspiring 
spirit, or chilled or stimulated his ardor. He 
espoused the cause of the poorest client, about 
the most meagre subject of controversy, with 
the same fidelity and enthusiasm as when millions 
were at stake, and sovereign States the combat- 
ants. No love of money ever planted the least 
root of evil in his soul; and this should not fail 
to be said in remembrance of him, in days when 
money rules the world. 

His theory of advocacy was the only possible 
theory consistent with the sound and wholesome 
administration of justice — that, with all loyalty to 

16 



EUFUS CHOATE 

truth and honor, he must devote his best talents 
and attainments, all that he was, and all that he 
could, to the support and enforcement of the 
cause committed to his trust. It is right here to 
repeat the words of Mr. Justice Curtis, speak- 
ing for himself and for the whole Bar, that ' ' Great 
injustice would be done to this great and eloquent 
advocate, by attributing to him any want of loy- 
alty to truth, or any deference to wrong, because 
he employed all his great powers and attainments, 
and used to the utmost his consummate skill and 
eloquence, in exhibiting and enforcing the com- 
parative merits of one side of the cases in which 
he acted. In doing so he but did his duty. If 
other people did theirs, the administration of jus- 
tice was secure/ ' 

His name will ever be identified with trial by 
jury, the department of the profession in which 
he was absolutely supreme. He cherished with 
tenacious affection and interest its origin, its 
history and its great fundamental maxims — that 
the citizen charged with crime shall be presumed 
innocent until his guilt shall be established beyond 
all reasonable doubt; that no man shall be de- 
prived by the law of property or reputation until 
his right to retain is disproved by a clear pre- 
ponderance of evidence to the satisfaction of all 
the twelve; that every suitor shall be confronted 
with the proofs by which he shall stand or fall; 
that only after a fair hearing, with full right of 
cross-examination, and the observance of the vital 
rules of evidence, shall he forfeit life, liberty or 

17 



RUFUS CHOATB 

property, and then only by the judgment of his 
peers. 

Regarding these cardinal principles of Anglo- 
Saxon justice and policy as essential to the main- 
tenance of liberty and of civil society, he stood 
as their champion 

" with spear in rest and heart on flame," 

sheathed in the panoply of genius. 

To-day, when we have seen a great sister re- 
public on the verge of collapse for the violation 
of these first canons of Freedom, we may justly 
honor such a champion. 

But he displayed his undying loyalty to the 
profession on a still higher and grander scale, 
when he viewed and presented it as one of the 
great and indispensable departments of Govern- 
ment, as an instrumentality for the well-being and 
conservation of the State. "Pro clientibus saepe; 
pro lege, pro republica semper." 

I regard the magnificent argument which he 
made on the judicial tenure in the Constitutional 
Convention of 1853 as the greatest single service 
which he ever rendered to the profession, and to 
the Commonwealth, of which he was so proud. 
You will observe, if you read it, that it differs 
radically in kind, rather than in degree, from all 
his other speeches, arguments and addresses. 

Discarding all ornament, restraining with care- 
ful guard all tendency to flights of rhetoric, in 
clear and pellucid language, plain and unadorned, 
laying bare the very nerve of his thought, as if 

18 



RUFUS CHOATE 

he were addressing, as no doubt lie meant to ad- 
dress and convince, not alone his fellow delegates 
assembled in the convention, but the fishermen of 
Essex, the manufacturers of Worcester and 
Hampden, and the farmers of Berkshire — all the 
men and women of the Commonwealth, of that 
day and of all days to come — he pleads for the 
continuance of an appointed judiciary, and for the 
judicial tenure during good behavior, as the only 
safe foundations of justice and liberty. 

He draws the picture of " a good judge pro- 
foundly learned in all the learning of the law ;" 
" not merely upright and well intentioned; " 
" but the man who will not respect persons in 
judgment; " standing only for justice, " though 
the thunder should light upon his brow, ' ' while he 
holds the balance even, to protect the humblest 
and most odious individual against all the powers 
and the people of the Commonwealth; and " pos- 
sessing at all times the perfect confidence of the 
community, that he bear not the sword in vain." 
He stands for the existing system which has been 
devised and handed down by the Founders of the 
State, and appeals to its uniform success in pro- 
ducing just that kind of a judge ; to the experience 
and example of England since 1688; to the Fed- 
eral system which had furnished to the people of 
the Union such illustrious magistrates ; and finally 
to the noble line of great and good judges who 
had from the beginning presided in your courts. 
He then takes up and disposes of all objections 
and arguments drawn from other States, which 

19 



RUFUS CHOATE 

had adopted an elective judiciary and shortened 
terms, and conclusively demonstrates that to 
abide by the existing constitution of your judicial 
system was the only way to secure to Massachu- 
setts forever " a government of laws and not of 
men. ' ' 

It was on one of the red-letter days of my 
youth that I listened to that matchless argument, 
and, when it ended, and the last echoes of his 
voice died away, as he retired from the old Hall 
of the House of Representatives, leaning heavily 
upon the arm of Henry Wilson, all crumpled, di- 
shevelled and exhausted, I said to myself that some 
virtue had gone out of him — indeed some virtue 
did go out of him with every great effort — but that 
day it went to dignify and ennoble our profession, 
and to enrich and sustain the very marrow of the 
Commonwealth. If ever again the question 
should be raised within her borders, let that argu- 
ment be read in every assembly, every church and 
every school-house. Let all the people hear it. 
It is as potent and unanswerable to-day, and will 
be for centuries to come, as it was nearly half a 
century ago when it fell from his lips. Cling to 
your ancient system, which has made your Courts 
models of jurisprudence to all the world until 
this hour. Cling to it, and freedom shall reign 
here until the sunlight shall melt this bronze, and 
justice shall be done in Massachusetts, though the 
skies fall. 

And now, in conclusion, let me speak of his 
patriotism. I have always believed that Mr. Web- 

20 



EUFUS CHOATE 

ster, more than any other one man, was entitled 
to the credit of that grand and universal outburst 
of devotion, with which the whole North sprang 
to arms in defense of the Constitution and the 
Union, many years after his death, when the first 
shot at Fort Sumter, like a fire bell in the night, 
roused them from their slumber, and convinced 
them that the great citadel of their liberties was 
in actual danger. Differ as we may and must as 
to his final course in declining years, the one 
great fact can never be blotted out, that the great 
work of his grand and noble life was the defense 
of the Constitution — so that he came to be known 
of all men as its one Defender — that for thirty 
years he preached to the listening nation the cru- 
sade of nationality, and fired New England and 
the whole North with its spirit. He inspired 
them to believe that to uphold and preserve the 
Union, against every foe, was the first duty of the 
citizen; that if the Union was saved, all was 
saved; that if that was lost, all was lost. He 
moulded better even than he knew. It was his 
great brain that designed, his flaming heart that 
forged, his sublime eloquence that welded the 
sword, which was at last, when he was dust, to 
consummate his life's work, and make Liberty 
and Union one and inseparable forever. 

And so, in large measure, it was with Mr. 
Choate. His glowing heart went out to his coun- 
try with the passionate ardor of a lover. He be- 
lieved that the first duty of the lawyer, orator, 
scholar was to her. His best thoughts, his noblest 

21 



RUFUS CHOATE 

words were always for her. Seven of the best 
years of his life, in the Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives, at the greatest personal sacrifice, he 
gave absolutely to her service. On every impor- 
tant question that arose, he made, with infinite 
study and research, one of the great speeches of 
the debate. He commanded the affectionate re- 
gard of his fellows, and of the watchful and listen- 
ing nation. He was a profound and constant stu- 
dent of her history, and revelled in tracing her 
growth and progress from Plymouth Rock and 
Salem Harbor, until she filled the continent from 
sea to sea. He loved to trace the advance of the 
Puritan spirit, with which he was himself deeply 
imbued, from Winthrop and Endicott and Carver 
and Standish, through all the heroic periods and 
events of colonial and revolutionary and national 
life, until, in his own last years, it dominated 
and guided all of Free America. He knew full 
well, and displayed in his many splendid speeches 
and addresses, that one unerring purpose of free- 
dom and of Union ran through her whole history ; 
that there was no accident in it all; that all the 
generations, from the Mayflower down, marched 
to one measure and followed one flag ; that all the 
struggles, all the self-sacrifice, all the prayers and 
the tears, all the fear of God, all the soul-trials, 
all the yearnings for national life, of more than 
two centuries, had contributed to make the coun- 
try that he served and loved. He, too, preached, 
in season aud out of season, the gospel of Na- 
tionality. He was the faithful disciple of Web- 

22 



. RUFUS CHOATE 

ster, while that great Master lived, and, after his 
death, he bore aloft the same standard and main- 
tained the same cause. Mr. Everett spoke noth- 
ing more than the truth, when he said in Faneuil 
Hall, while all the bells were tolling, at the mo- 
ment when the vessel bringing home the dead 
body of his lifelong friend cast anchor in Boston 
Harbor : ' ' If ever there was a truly disinterested 
patriot, Rufus Choate was that man. In his po- 
litical career there was no shade of selfishness. 
Had he been willing to purchase advancement at 
the price often paid for it, there was never a 
moment, from the time he first made himself felt 
and known, that he could not have commanded 
anything that any party had to bestow. But he 
desired none of the rewards or honors of success." 
He foresaw clearly that the division of the 
country into geographical parties must end in 
civil war. What he could not see was, that there 
was no other way — that only by cutting out sla- 
very by the sword, could America secure Liberty 
and Union too — but to the last drop of his blood, 
and the last fibre of his being, he prayed and 
pleaded for the life of the nation, according to 
his light. Neither of these great patriots lived 
to see the fearful spectacle which they had so 
eloquently deprecated. But when at last the 
dread day came, and our young heroes marched 
forth to bleed and die for their country — their 
own sous among the foremost — they carried in 
their hearts the lessons which both had taught, 
and all Massachusetts, all New England, from 

23 



RUFUS CHOATE 

the beginning, marched behind them, " carrying 
the flag and keeping step to the music of the 
Union/ ' as he had bade them, and so I say, let us 
award to them both their due share of the glory. 

Thus to-day we consign this noble statue to the 
keeping of posterity, to remind them of " the 
patriot, jurist, orator, scholar, citizen and friend,' ' 
whom we are proud to have known and loved. 



24 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

Address delivered at the unveiling of St. Gaudens' Statue of 
Admiral Farragut in New York, May 25, 1881. 

THE fame of naval heroes lias always capti- 
vated and charmed the imaginations of men. 
The romance of the sea that hangs about them, 
their picturesque and dramatic achievements, the 
deadly perils that surround them, their loyalty to 
the flag that floats over them, their triumphs 
snatched from the jaws of defeat, and deaths in 
the hour of victory, inspire a warmer enthusiasm 
and a livelier sympathy than is awarded to equal 
deeds on land. Who can read with dry eyes the 
story of Nelson, in the supreme moment of vic- 
tory at Trafalgar, dying in the cockpit of his flag- 
ship, embracing his beloved comrade with, ' * Kiss 
me, Hardy! Thank God, I have done my duty," 
on his fainting lips, bidding the world good-night, 
and turning over like a tired child to sleep and 
wake no more? What American heart has not 
been touched by that kindred picture of Lawrence, 
expiring in the cabin of the beaten Chesapeake, 
with " Don't give up the ship," on his dying lips? 
What schoolboy has not treasured in his memory 
the bloody fight of Paul Jones with the Serapis, 
the gallant exploits of Perry on Lake Erie, and 
of McDonough on Lake Champlain, and the other 

27 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

bright deeds which have illuminated the brief 
annals of the American navy? 

We come together to-day to recall the memory 
and to crown the statue of one of the dearest of 
these idols of mankind — of one whose name will 
ever stir like a trumpet the hearts of his grateful 
countrymen. 

In the first year of the century — at the very 
time when the great English admiral was wearing 
fresh laurels for winning, in defiance of orders,, 
the famous battle of the Baltic, one of the blood- 
iest pictures in the book of naval warfare — there 
was born on an humble farm in the unexplored 
wilderness of Tennessee, a child who was, sixty 
years afterwards, to do for America what Eng- 
land's idol had just done for her, to rescue her in 
an hour of supreme peril, and to win a renown 
which should not fade or be dim in comparison 
with that of the most famous of the sea-kings of 
the old world. For though there were many great 
admirals before Farragut, it will be hard to find 
one whose life and fortunes combine more of 
those elements which command the enduring ad- 
miration and approval of his fellow-men. He 
was as good as he was great — as game as he 
was mild, and as mild as he was game — as skillful 
as he was successful, as full of human sympathy 
and kindness as he was of manly wisdom, and as 
unselfish as he was patriotic. So long as the 
republic which he served and helped to save shall 
endure, his memory must be dear to every lover 
of his country, and so long as this great city shall 

28 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

continue to be the gateway of the nation and the 
centre of its commerce, it must preserve and honor 
his statue, which to-day we dedicate to the com- 
ing generations. 

To trace the career of Farragut is to go back to 
the very infancy of the nation. His father, a 
brave soldier of the Revolution, was not of the 
Anglo-Saxon stock for which we are wont to assert 
a monopoly of the manly virtues, but of that 
Spanish race, which in all times has produced 
good fighters on sea and land. His mother must 
have been a woman fit to bear and suckle heroes, 
for his earliest recollection of her was upon the 
occasion when, axe in hand, in the absence of 
her husband, she defended her cottage and her 
helpless brood of little ones against an attack 
of marauding Indians, who were seeking their 
scalps. Like all heroes, then, he was born brave, 
and got his courage from his father's loins and 
his mother's milk. The death of the mother and 
the removal of the father to New Orleans, where 
he was placed by the Government in command of 
the naval station, introduced the boy to the very 
scene where, more than half a century afterwards, 
some of the brightest of his proud laurels were 
to be won, and led him, by a singular providence, 
to the final choice of a profession, at an age when 
children generally are just beginning their school- 
ing. The father of the renowned Commodore 
David Porter happened to fall ill and die under 
the roof of Farragut 's father, and his illustrious 
son, whose heart overflowed with gratitude for 

29 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

the hospitable kindness which had welcomed his 
dying father, announced his intention to adopt a 
child of that house, and to train him up in his 
own profession. 

That happy conjunction of great merit with 
good fortune which attended the future Admiral 
through his whole life, was nowhere more sig- 
nally marked than in the circumstance which thus 
threw together the veteran naval commander, al- 
ready famous, and soon to win a world-wide name 
for skill, and daring, and enterprise, and the boy 
who, in his own last years, was destined to eclipse 
the glory of his patron, and to witch the world 
with still more brilliant exploits. 

The influence of such a spirit and character as 
Porter's on that of a dutiful, ardent and ambi- 
tious boy like Farragut, cannot be overestimated. 
It was not a mere nominal adoption. Porter took 
him from his home, and became his second father, 
and with him the boy lived, and studied, and 
cruised, and fought, having thus ever before him 
an example worthy of himself. No wonder that 
he aspired to place himself, at last, at the head 
of the profession into which his introduction had 
been under such auspices ! 

Behold him, then, at the tender age of nine 
years the happy recipient of a midshipman 's war- 
rant in the United States Navy, bearing date De- 
cember 17, 1810 ; and two years later, on the break- 
ing out of the war with Great Britain, making his 
first cruise with his noble patron, who, as Captain 
Porter, now took command of the Essex, whose 
name he was to render immortal by his achieve- 

30 



ADMIRAL FAREAGUT 

ments beneath her flag. It was in this severe 
school of active and important service that Mid- 
shipman Farragut learned, almost in infancy, 
those first lessons in seamanship and war which 
he afterwards turned to practical account in wider 
fields and more dangerous enterprises. His faith- 
ful study of all the details of his profession, 
guided and inspired by that ever present sense 
of duty, which was the most marked character- 
istic of his life, prepared him, step by step, for 
any service in the line of that profession which 
time or chance might happen to bring ; and when, 
at last, in March, 1814, the gallant little frigate 
met her fate in that spirited and bloody encounter 
with the British frigate Phebe and the sloop of 
war Cherub, off the port of Valparaiso, a contest 
which brought new fame to the American navy, 
as well as to all who bore a part in it, the boy of 
twelve, receiving an actual baptism of fire and 
blood, was found equal to the work of a man. He 
seems never to have known what fear was. If 
nerve makes the man, he was already as good as 
made. He thus describes this first of his great 
fights in his modest journal: 

" During the action, I was like i Paddy in the 
catharpins,' a man on occasions. I performed 
the duties of captain's aid, quarter gunner, pow- 
der boy, and, in fact, did everything that was re- 
quired of me. I shall never forget the horrid im- 
pression made upon me at the sight of the first 
man I had ever seen killed. It staggered and 
sickened me at first, but they soon began to fall 
around me so fast, that it all appeared like a 

31 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

dream, and produced no effect on my nerves. I 
can remember well, while I was standing near the 
captain, just abaft the mainmast, a shot came 
through the waterways and glanced upwards, kill- 
ing four men who were standing by the side of the 
gun, taking the last one in the head and scattering 
his brains on both of us. But this awful sight did 
not affect me half as much as the death of the 
first poor fellow. I neither thought of nor no- 
ticed anything but the working of the guns." 

He never was in battle again until forty-eight 
years afterwards, when he astounded the world 
by the capture of New Orleans, but who can doubt 
that that memorable day in the Essex, when her 
plucky commander fought her against hopeless 
odds, only lowering his colors when she was al- 
ready sinking with all but one of her officers and 
more than half of her crew on the list of killed 
and wounded, was a lifelong inspiration to his 
courage and loyalty, that it planted forever, in 
the heart of the boy, that starry flag, which, as 
an old man, he was to bear at last, through blood- 
ier conflicts still, to final victory? 

It is wonderful how that half century of rou- 
tine service in a navy that had nothing to do, in 
times of profound and unbroken peace, prepared 
and equipped him for those immense responsi- 
bilities and novel undertakings that were finally 
thrown upon him. One would naturally suppose 
that fifty years of dead calm — waiting for dead 
men's shoes while there was no fighting to kill 
them off — no active service anywhere — would 

32 



ADMIEAL FAEEAGUT 

have benumbed the energy and stifled the ambition 
of an ordinary man and have unfitted him alto- 
gether for action, when at last the day of action 
came. But Farragut was no ordinary man. He 
magnified his calling when there was nothing else 
to magnify it, and by being faithful over a few 
things fitted himself at a moment's notice, to be- 
come a ruler over many. Porter, in his report to 
the Government, had commended him for bravery, 
but regretted that he was too young for promo- 
tion. The close of the war left him at the very 
bottom round of the ladder, but with a heart full 
of generous ardor and an unflinching will to do 
his duty, and so to climb, step by step, to the 
top, on which he ever kept a steadfast eye. The 
faithful midshipman was indeed the father of the 
future admiral. The boy that never shirked 
moulded the man that never flinched and never 
failed. 

The traditions of the little American Navy of 
that early day were proud and glorious ones — 
and well calculated to fire a youthful heart with 
generous enthusiasm. It had carried off the hon- 
ors of the war, and on the lakes and on the ocean 
in skill, pluck and endurance it had coped success- 
fully with the proud flag of England — the undis- 
puted mistress of the seas — arrogant with the 
prestige of centuries, and fresh from the conquest 
of her ancient rivals. Its successful commanders 
were recognized as heroes alike by their grateful 
countrymen and by a generous foe, and furnished 
examples fit to be followed and imitated by the 

33 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

young and unknown midshipman whose renown 
was one day to cast theirs all in the shade. 

It was neither by lucky accident nor political 
favor, nor by simply growing old in the service, 
that Farragut came in time to be the recognized 
head of his profession. From the first he studied 
seamanship and the laws of naval warfare as a 
science, and put his conscience into his work, as 
well in the least details as in the great principles 
of the business. So as he rose in rank he grew in 
power, too, and never once was found unequal to 
any task imposed upon him. Self-reliance ap- 
pears to have been the great staple of his charac- 
ter. Thrown upon his own exertions from the 
beginning, buoyed up by no fortune, advanced by 
no favor, he worked his own way to the quarter- 
deck, and by the single-hearted pursuit of his 
profession was master of all its resources and 
ready to perform great deeds, if a day for great 
deeds should ever come. 

Had that protracted and inglorious era of peace 
and of compromise, which began with his early 
manhood and ended with the election of Lincoln, 
been continued for another decade, he would have 
passed into history without fame, but without 
reproach, as a brave and competent officer, but 
undistinguished in that bright catalogue of manly 
virtue and of stainless honor which forms the mus- 
ter roll of the American navy. But when treason 
reared its ugly head, and by the guns at Fort Sum- 
ter roused from its long slumber the sleeping 
courage of the nation to avenge that insulted flag 

34 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

— that flag which from childhood to old age he 
had borne in honor over every sea and into the 
ports of every nation — his country found him 
ready and with all his armor on, and found among 
all her champions no younger heart, no cooler 
head, no steadier nerve, than in the veteran Cap- 
tain, who brought to her service a natural genius 
for fighting and a mind stored with the rich ex- 
perience of a well-spent life, and then, at last, all 
that half -century of patient waiting and of faith- 
ful study bore its glorious fruit. 

Much as the country owes to Farragut for the 
matchless services which his brains and courage 
rendered in the day of her peril, she is still more 
in debt to him for the unconditional loyalty of 
his large and generous heart. Born, bred, and 
married in the South, with no friends and hardly 
an acquaintance except in the South, his sym- 
pathy, while there was yet time or room for sym- 
pathy, must all have been with her; " God for- 
bid,' ' he said, " that I should ever have to raise 
my hand against the South! " The approaching 
outbreak of hostilities found him on waiting or- 
ders at his home in Norfolk, surrounded by every 
influence that could put his loyalty to the test, 
in the midst of officers of the army and navy, all 
sworn like him to uphold the flag of the Republic, 
but almost to a man meditating treason against it. 
Could there have been a peaceful separation, could 
those erring sisters have been permitted, as at 
least one great Northern patriot then insisted 
they should be permitted, to depart in peace, he 

35 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

would doubtless have gone with his State, but 
with a heart broken by the rupture of his country. 
But when the manifest destiny of America for- 
bade that folly, there was but one course for 
Farragut, and there is no evidence that his loyalty 
ever for a moment faltered. 

Other great and manly hearts, tried by the same 
ordeal, came to a different issue, and, perhaps, 
history will do them better justice than we can. 
But, now that it is all over, now that a restored 
Union has made them fellow citizens once more, 
we cannot refuse to recognize the manhood with 
which they struggled even to their fall. 

No candid Northern man can read at this dis- 
tance of time, without emotion, the heartrending 
letter of General Lee to Scott, resigning his com- 
mission, and redeeming his sword for Virginia, 
although history has pronounced it treason; but 
this we may say, and must say, that Lee and all 
who followed his example loved their State in- 
deed, but forgot and betrayed their country, while 
Farragut, when the issue came, knew only his 
country ; loved only his country and meant still to 
have a country to love. Not a single moment 
could he hesitate, and when Virginia, who had 
only a few weeks before elected delegates by a 
large majority, pledged or instructed to maintain 
her allegiance, was suddenly and treacherously, 
as he expressed it 6 ' dragooned out of the Union, ' ' 
he could not sleep another night on the soil of Vir- 
ginia. At ten o'clock in the morning on the 18th 
of April, 1861, news came to Norfolk that the or- 

36 



ADMIEAL FAEEAGUT 

dinance of secession had passed — and Farragut's 
mind was made up ; lie announced to his faithful 
wife, that for his part, come what might, he was 
going to stick to the flag; and at five in the after- 
noon they had packed their carpet bags and taken 
the first steamboat for the north. That stick to 
the flag should be carved on his tombstone, and on 
the pedestals of all his statues as it was stamped 
upon his soul. Stick to the flag shall be his pass- 
word to posterity, to the latest generations — for 
he stuck to it when all about him abandoned it. 
He was - 

" Faithful found 
Among the faithless — faithful only he." 

It is a striking coincidence, recalling the most 
critical and gloomy hour through which the coun- 
try was then passing, that when the steamboat 
which bore Farragut northward flying from se- 
cession, and hastening to lay his sword at the feet 
of the President, arrived at Baltimore on the 
morning of the 19th of April, the brave boys of 
the Massachusetts Sixth Eegiment had just been 
fired upon in the streets, as they were marching 
to the rescue of the imperilled capitol — the pave- 
ment was still wet with their blood, the first blood 
of the Eebellion for slavery, just as eighty-six 
years before, at that very day and hour, the com- 
mon at Lexington had been crimsoned with the 
blood of the ancestors of those very lads, the first 
that was shed in that other rebellion which, for 
freedom's sake, at once became a Eevolution. 

37 



ADMIEAL FARRAGUT 

What a day for Massachusetts to celebrate! 
Mother of Liberty, as she is ! Lincoln and his dis- 
tressed Cabinet at Washington stood in sore need 
that day of the voice and the presence and the 
sword of every patriot, and the timely coming of 
so great a naval captain as Farragut to the rescue 
was as good to their souls as the arrival of a 
friendly squadron, as events soon proved. 

Never was a nation less prepared for naval 
war than the United States in April, 1861. Forty- 
two old vessels, many of which were unseaworthy, 
the remains only of a decrepit peace establish- 
ment, constituted our entire navy ; and all at once 
we had three thousand miles of exposed sea-coast 
to blockade and defend, our own great sea-ports 
to protect, rebel cruisers to pursue, and American 
commerce to maintain, if possible. The last was 
utterly impossible ; the merchant service took ref- 
uge under other flags, and our own almost van- 
ished from the seas, where it had so long proudly 
floated. But the same irresistible spirit of loy- 
alty, the same indomitable will to preserve the 
imperilled Union, which brought great armies all 
equipped into the field, soon created a fleet also 
that commanded the respect of the world, and 
placed the United States once more in the front 
rank of naval powers. 

The active services of such a man as Farragut 
could not long be spared, and when that great 
naval enterprise, the opening of the Mississippi, 
was planned — an enterprise the like of which had 
never been attempted before — he was chosen by 

38 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

the Government to lead it, by the advice of his 
superiors in rank, and with the universal approval 
of the people, on the principle of choosing the 
best man for the service of greatest danger ; and 
he accepted it on his favorite maxim, that the 
greatest exposure was the penalty of the highest 
rank. His experience was vast, but there was no 
experience that would of itself qualify any man 
for such a service. 

It was upon his personal qualities that the 
country relied. Success was absolutely neces- 
sary. The depressing reverses of the first year 
of the war, the threatened intervention of foreign 
powers, and the growing arrogance of the Confed- 
eracy forbade the possibility of a failure. And 
all who knew Farragut knew that in his lexicon 
there was no such word as — fail. When he saw 
the gigantic preparations that had been made, he 
had said that he could take New Orleans, and 
everybody knew that he would take it, or pay his 
life as the forfeit. " I have now attained," said 
he, ' ' what I have been looking for all my life — a 
flag — and having attained it, all that is necessary 
to complete the scene is a victory. If I die in 
the attempt, it will only be what every officer has 
to expect. He who dies in doing his duty to his 
country, and at peace with his God, has played 
out the drama of life to the best advantage. ' ' He 
put his trust in God, and in his own indomitable 
will, and none of Homer's heroes had more im- 
plicit faith in the God of Battles than he was wont 
to express. In every trying moment he looked 

39 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

to Him as his leader, and after every victory he 
gave to Him the praise. 

But still, like Sydney, he believed that God only 
helps those who help themselves, and acted on 
Cromwell's advice, " Trust in God, my boys, but 
keep your powder dry." So he wrote from Ship 
Island, " God alone decides the contest, but we 
must put our shoulders to the wheel. ' ' And when 
he was putting the Hartford into action, he 
crowded her with guns wherever a gun could be 
worked. It was Farragut 's peerless courage that 
ironclad his wooden frigate, and carried her 
safely through the hellish fire of the forts. He 
had that two-o 'clock-in- the-morning kind of cour- 
age of which Bonaparte boasted, and defined as 
"unprepared courage — that which is necessary on 
an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the 
most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of 
judgment and decision." Happy was the day, 
therefore, for us all when Farragut, on his own 
merits, was put in command of by far the most 
powerful naval expedition that had ever sailed 
under the American flag, for one of the most peri- 
lous enterprises that any fleet had ever attempted. 

The sun would set upon us if we were to un- 
dertake this afternoon to tell the story of the 
capture of New Orleans. The world knows it by 
heart, how when Farragut gave the signal at two 
o'clock in the morning, the brave Bailey, in the 
Cayuga, led the way, and how the great admiral, 
in the Hartford, in two short hours, carried his 
wooden fleet in triumph through that storm of 

40 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

lightning from the forts, and scattered and de- 
stroyed the whole fleet of rebel gunboats and iron- 
clads, and how it pleased Almighty God, as he 
wrote at sunrise to his wife, to preserve his life 
through a fire such as the world had scarcely 
known. Thus, in a single night, a great revolution 
in maritime warfare was accomplished, and a 
blow struck at the vitals of the Confederacy which 
made it reel to its centre. New Orleans, the key 
of the Mississippi — the Queen City of the South, 
was taken never to be lost again, and the opening 
made for all those great triumphs which soon 
crowned our arms in the West. But victory found 
our brave captain as modest and merciful as the 
conflict had proved him terrible, and history may 
be searched in vain for greater clemency shown 
to a hostile city captured after such a struggle 
than that with which the Federal commander, un- 
der circumstances of the utmost aggravation and 
insult, treated New Orleans. 

In all his subsequent service on the Mississippi 
— in clearing the river at Vicksburg and running 
the batteries of Port Hudson, we find him exhibit- 
ing the same great traits of character, on the 
strength of which, at New Orleans, both friends 
and foes had united in pronouncing him a hero 
of the first class. The same fertility of resource 
— the same contempt of personal danger — the 
same caution in his designs, and the same resist- 
less energy in execution, and withal, the same gen- 
tleness and modesty always. 

" You know my creed," he says, on the day 

41 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

after his gallant passage of the terrible batteries 
of Port Hudson, ' ' I never send others in advance 
where there is a doubt; and being one on whom 
the country has bestowed its greatest honors, I 
thought I ought to take the risks which belong 
to them, so I took the lead. I knew the enemy 
would try to destroy the old flag-ship, and I de- 
termined that the best way to prevent that result 
was to try and hurt them the most." 

The ardent loyalty of his officers and men, who 
loved and believed in him, and whom his own cool- 
ness and courage inspired, the generous applause 
of a grateful country, and the faithful support 
of the Government, who realized his merits, sus- 
tained him through all those trying months and 
years, while the final triumph of the cause of the 
Union, so long promised and expected, seemed 
ever receding like the horizon before him. 

But, at last, he got the chance that his hopeful 
heart had longed for — to strike that fatal blow at 
Mobile, which forever sealed up the Confederacy 
from all intercourse with the outer world, and 
hastened its final dissolution, making hopeless, on 
its part, any further struggle in the West, while 
Grant and Sherman and Sheridan and Hancock 
were dealing its death blows in Virginia and 
Georgia. 

The battle of Mobile Bay has long since become 
a favorite topic of history and song. Had not 
Farragut himself set an example for it at New 
Orleans, this greatest of all his achievements 
might have been pronounced impossible by the 

42 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

military world, and its perfect success brought 
all mankind to his feet in admiration and homage. 
As a signal instance of one man's intrepid cour- 
age and quick resolve converting disaster and 
threatened defeat into overwhelming victory, it 
had no precedent since Nelson at Copenhagen, de- 
fying the orders of his superior officer, and re- 
fusing to obey the signal to retreat, won a triumph 
that placed his name among the immortals. 

When Nelson's lieutenant on board the Ele- 
phant pointed out to him the signal of recall on 
the Commander-in-Chief ', the battered hero of the 
Nile clapped his spyglass with his only hand to 
his blind eye, and exclaimed: " I really do not 
see the signal. Keep mine for closer battle fly- 
ing. That's the way I answer such signals. Nail 
mine to the mast! " and so went on and won the 
great day. 

When the Brooklyn hesitated among the fatal 
torpedoes, in the terrible jaws of Fort Morgan, 
at the sight of the Tecumseh exploding, and sink- 
ing with the brave Craven and his ill-fated hundred 
in her path, it was one of those critical moments 
on which the destinies of battles hang. Napoleon 
said that it was always the quarters of an hour 
that decided the fate of a battle ; but here a single 
minute was to win or lose the day, for when the 
Brooklyn began to back, the whole line of Federal 
ships were giving signs of confusion, while they 
were in the very mouth of hell itself, the batteries 
of Fort Morgan making the whole of Mobile 
Point a living flame. It was the supreme moment 

43 



ADMIEAL FAKEAGUT 

of Farragut's life. If lie faltered all was lost — 
if he went on in the torpedo-strewn path of the 
Tecumseh he might be sailing to his death. It 
seemed as though Nelson himself were in the 
maintop of the Hartford. " What's the trou- 
ble? " was shouted through a trumpet from the 
flagship to the Brooklyn. " Torpedoes," was the 
reply. " Damn the torpedoes," said Farragut. 
" Four bells, Captain Drayton, go ahead, full 
speed, ' ' and so he led his fleet to victory. 

The painters and poets have vied with each 
other in depicting the hero of Mobile Bay lashed 
in the shrouds of the Hartford, as she sailed 
through that fiery storm of shot and shell, leading 
her companions to glory. That was, indeed, no 
holiday station, for, in nineteen months of actual 
service, the flagship had been struck already not 
less than two hundred and forty times, but never 
once had a hair of that head, which always showed 
in the most exposed position on the vessel, been 
touched. No wonder that his crews and officers 
believed that he bore a charmed life, and were 
always ready to follow in the same spirit wher- 
ever he dared to lead — no wonder that this last 
sublime self offering of their dear leader to the 
God of Battles, whom he trusted, inspired every 
man in the fleet to almost equal confidence and 
daring, as it did. 

Van Tromp sailed up and down the British 
channel, in sight of the coast, with a broom at his 
mast-head, in token of his purpose to sweep his 
hated rivals from the seas. The greatest of Eng- 

44 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

lish admirals, in his last fight, as he was bearing 
down npon the enemy, hoisted on his flagship a 
signal which bore these memorable words : ' ' Eng- 
land expects every man to do his dnty " — words 
that have inspired the courage of Englishmen 
from that hour to this; but it was reserved for 
Farragut, as he was bearing down upon the death- 
dealing batteries of the rebels, to hoist nothing- 
less than himself into the rigging of his flagship, 
as the living signal of duty done, that the world 
might see that what England had expected, Amer- 
ica, too, had fully realized, and that every man, 
from the rear-admiral down, was faithful. 

The creative genius of the young and brilliant 
artist, who produced this noble statue of Farra- 
gut, which has to-day been unveiled, to stand for 
centuries in this busy highway of American life — 
presents him, as he stood in that crowning hour 
of victory, the very incarnation of courage and 
loyalty, commanding the homage of his country- 
men, and the admiration of mankind. That terri- 
ble era of fraternal bloodshed, which witnessed 
his conflicts and triumphs, can never be forgotten, 
but the great Civil War will be worth all its 
frightful cost — if it has realized in the heart of 
every American the lessons of Farragut ? s life, 
and his supreme conviction, that the people of 
these thirty-eight States have but one country, 
that unconditional allegiance to the Union — to the 
Union for Liberty only — is the sole condition of 
citizenship, and that whoever hereafter lifts his 
hand against its Flag must be forever dishonored. 

45 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

The golden days of Peace have come to last, as 
we hope, for many generations. The great 
Armies of the Republic have been long since dis- 
banded — our peerless Navy, which, at the close of 
the war, challenged the wonder of the world, has 
almost ceased to exist — but still we are safe 
against attack from within and from without. 
The memory of our heroes is ' ' the cheap defence 
of the Nation, the nurse of manly sentiment and 
of heroic enterprise " forever. Our frigates 
may rot in the harbor — our ironclads may rust at 
the dock, but if ever again the flag is in peril, 
invincible armies will swarm upon the land, and 
steel-clad squadrons leap forth upon the sea to 
maintain it. If we only teach our children 
patriotism as the first duty, and loyalty as the 
first virtue, America will be safe in the future as 
she has been in the past. 

When the war of 1812 broke out she had only 
six little frigates for her navy, but the valor of 
her sons eked out her scanty fleet, and won for 
her the freedom of the seas. In all the single en- 
gagements of that little war, with one exception, 
the Americans were victors, and, at its close, the 
Stars and Stripes were saluted with honor in 
every quarter of the globe. So, when this war of 
the Rebellion came suddenly upon us, we had a 
few ancient frigates, a few unseaworthy gunboats, 
but when it ended, our proud and triumphant navy 
counted seven hundred and sixty vessels of war, 
of which seventy were ironclads. We can always 
be sure, then, of fleets and armies enough. But 

46 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

shall we always have a Grant to lead the one, and 
a Farragut to inspire the other? Will our future 
soldiers and sailors share, as theirs almost to the 
last man shared, their devotion, their courage 
and their faith? Yes, on this one condition, that 
every American child learns from his cradle, as 
Farragut learned from his, that his first and last 
duty is to his country, that to live for her is honor, 
and to die for her is glory. 



47 



THE METEOPOLITAN SANITARY FAIR 



THE METROPOLITAN SANI- 
TARY FAIR 

Address delivered at the opening of the Metropolitan Sanitary 
Fair in New York, April 5, 1864. 

THE ladies of the Executive Committee, for 
themselves and for all the generous women 
who have given their time, their services and their 
hearts to this glorious enterprise, and in the 
sacred name of charity, which is the watchword 
of New York to-night, accept at your chairman's 
hands these bountiful treasures, which the wealth 
of this great metropolis and the universal loyalty 
of Americans at home and abroad, have poured 
out at their feet to-night — and they pledge them- 
selves here anew to finish the good work which 
they have begun, and, with the aid of this gener- 
ous public, to fulfil the high and holy trust on 
whose behalf they have solicited these lavish 
alms. Standing here for the moment to represent 
those whose hearts have prompted and whose 
hands have planned this wonderful Fair, and 
speaking as with their lips, I shall not presume to 
eulogize them. They are themselves their all-suf- 
ficient eulogy. Their own works do praise them ; 
and he must indeed be gifted with a better elo- 
quence than human lips have ever uttered, who 

51 



THE METEOPOLITAN SANITAKY FAIK 

can add to the lustre of that imperishable chaplet 
of praise, with which their own great labors of 
love and mercy in these three years have decked 
the brows of the women of America. 

It is the women of a country, in whose hands its 
destiny reposes; and no cause that is not great 
enough to command their devotion, and pure 
enough to deserve their sympathy, can ever wholly 
triumph. But the wholeness of their devotion and 
the ardor of their sympathy are the tests, that the 
cause which has called us together to-night is one 
of the grandest and purest that ever appealed to 
the heart of man. It is the cause of our country, 
bleeding from the living veins of her brave sons. 
Thousands and tens of thousands of our sick and 
wounded heroes now languish in the hospitals 
of the Sanitary Commission, from the Potomac 
to the Mississippi, and thousands and tens of 
thousands more will be added to their number in 
the months of battle that are already impending 
over us. It was to save and succor these martyrs 
to our liberties that that noble institution was 
founded, and to hold up the drooping hands of the 
institution itself the women of all the cities of 
the North, with a spontaneous and contagious im- 
pulse, have devoted the entire winter to the work 
of these fairs. 

You all know what great things have been 
done elsewhere — how the cities of the East and 
of the West have vied with each other in their 
efforts and achievements; and how at last even 
Brooklyn, jealous of her independence and fear- 

52 



THE METROPOLITAN SANITARY FAIR 

ing to be swallowed up in spite of the broad 
waters of the East river, has taken time by the 
forelock, and, rousing herself to unknown vitality, 
has poured a flood of wealth into the treasury of 
the Commission. And now, with these bright 
examples before her, it remains to be seen what 
New York shall do. 

The hopes of the managers may seem to some 
extravagant; but the highest figures that have 
yet been named must surely fall short of the true 
result. And why should not this great me- 
tropolis, rolling in wealth, plunged to the lips 
in luxury, not only surpass each one of her 
sister cities in this strife of love, but even 
do more than all the rest together? Why should 
she not wipe from her escutcheon the unhappy 
stains of the last summer* by the bright con- 
summation of this glorious winter! Surely, 
if ever there was a time and a city which ought 
to respond to the sufferings of our gallant sol- 
diers, it is New York to-day. Why, what have the 
men of New York been doing while these our 
brethren have been bleeding and dying? Let 
Wall street answer; let the bloated fortunes of 
her merchants and tradesmen answer ; let the pur- 
ple and fine linen in which her citizens go clothed 
tell; let the diamonds and jewels on the necks of 
her daughters speak — aye, let this bright and 
shining company itself reveal the story. Be- 
hind that living rampart of flesh, which the 
breasts of a million of our fellow-citizens in arms 

*The bloody draft riots of 1863. 

53 



THE METROPOLITAN SANITARY FAIR 

have formed, we have followed the giddy pursuit 
of wealth, and have bought and sold and gathered 
in our gains as quietly and serenely as if the 
peace of the nation had never been ruffled. Why, 
then, should we not give, and give largely, to this 
great cause? Yes, for us, the effeminate men of 
New York, who have shared with the women all 
the benefits and profits of the soldiers' toils and 
woes there is no escape from the stern calls of 
the hour. Our country has but two great needs 
in this day of her peril — men and money — as 
everybody knows. Take, then, your lives in your 
hands, and go forth to battle for the liberties 
which your brave fathers won. Or, if you shrink 
from that — if you love your lives too well to give 
them to your country — then there is but one al- 
ternative — you must pay down now and here a 
generous ransom. If, in the midst of war and 
carnage you will enjoy such luxuries as life and 
peace and plenty, you must pay roundly for 
them. You cannot keep all your life, and all 
your treasure, too. One thing or the other, ' ' your 
money or your life," is what America and the 
ladies demand of every man of us to-night. 

And now, if you will look around you at all the 
wonders of the Fair, you will see that the ladies 
have spared no pains to satisfy every taste, how- 
ever fastidious, and to draw the money from every 
pocket, however reluctant. Is your soul glowing 
with the love of art? Go feast it in yonder gal- 
lery of pictures, the most magnificent which the 
American sun has ever lighted. Or, if dead to 

54 



THE METROPOLITAN SANITARY FAIR 

the beauties of art, you would study nature, and, 
as Bryant hath it, " hold communion with her 
visible forms/ ' go forth to the wigwam of Bier- 
stadt, and visit the red men and women of the 
wilderness — sweet children of nature — arrayed in 
primitive simplicity, sounding the war-whoop on 
the peaceful pavement of Fourteenth Street, 
amusing themselves and their visitors with the 
innocent sports of the tomahawk and the scalping 
knife. Or, perhaps a love of the marvellous has 
seized possession of your soul. There is food 
even for you; for, lo! the old " Curiosity Shop " 
opens its portals, wherein you can see the seven 
hundred wonders of the world and the glory of 
them, and all without extra charge. Here, too, is 
food for the hungry in most ample stores. To- 
morrow the Knickerbocker Kitchen, on Union 
Square, will open its doors, and, if rumor is to be 
trusted, the good things there to be served up 
by ladies of the purest Dutch descent will have 
such magic virtues that a fortnight's board in 
that mushroom edifice will transform the most 
cadaverous and ill-conditioned exiles from New 
England into the sleek and unctuous image of 
those primeval Dutchmen to whose memory that 
establishment is dedicated. 

But you must go and look for yourselves for 
these and all the other glories of the Fair. You 
can hardly go amiss in any direction, in 
the honest endeavor to empty your burden- 
some purses — and be sure that no less than 
this is expected of you. I do not know that 

55 



THE METEOPOLITAN SANITAEY FAIR 

positive orders have been given to the police to 
arrest and detain every man who is fonnd leaving 
the premises with money in his pockets; hut, of 
course, those officials know their duty and will dis- 
charge it fearlessly. 

Bnt I should fail to do justice to the feelings 
of those for whom I speak if I did not express 
their heartfelt gratitude to all who have con- 
tributed in any manner to this auspicious opening 
— to the citizens at large, of every trade and call- 
ing — to the kindred sympathy of the people of 
New Jersey — to our gallant firemen — to the hun- 
dred distant cities and towns that have organized 
their charity into generous gifts — to the loyal 
Americans in foreign lands — and, above all, if I 
should fail to offer a special tribute of thanks 
and praise to the countless friends of the soldier 
among the poor, who, from every quarter and in 
every possible form, have poured in their little 
offerings of love, whose grateful incense must 
call down the blessings of Heaven upon them and 
us. And may I not venture, without the fear of 
suspicion or envy, to say that the ladies are in- 
debted more than to any other class of our citizens 
to the generous artists of New York for their un- 
rivalled zeal and devotion to the good work? 
Others have given of their money and their sub- 
stance ; but the artists have transferred their very 
life-blood to the canvas, and given each the child 
of his brain to the cause. They have placed the 
cap upon this beautiful column, which the ladies 
have raised, and given us that noble gallery, 

56 



THE METROPOLITAN SANITARY FAIR 

which lends to the whole Fair a dignity and a 
beauty which no other Fair has shown. And now, 
what remains but that we should all, with all our 
might, second the glorious exertions of the man- 
agers 1 And when the Fair is ended and the grand 
result is known, as our gallant armies march out 
to strike that gigantic blow, which shall, as we 
hope, send this foul rebellion reeling to its last 
retreat, let it bear to them the glad tidings that 
they carry with them the hearts and the hopes and 
the prayers of twenty millions of loyal Ameri- 
cans; and that for as many as fall or faint by 
the way all the strong arms of the nation will be 
ready to save them, and all its fair hands to heal 
their wounds or soothe their dying hours. 



57 



THE TWEED EING 



THE TWEED RING 

Address delivered at the meeting of the Committee of Seventy at 
Cooper Institute, New York, November 3, 1871. 

AT last, fellow-citizens, for the first time in 
many years, we can once more hold up our 
heads like men, and declare without any sense of 
shame that we are citizens of the great and glori- 
ous city of New York. Until within the last three 
months we exhibited to the world a truly humilia- 
ting and disgusting spectacle. A city of a million 
free inhabitants, the metropolis of the Continent 
in every sense of the word, the centre of its 
wealth, its intelligence and its influence ; the seat 
of its commerce, and the starting point from 
which all its greatest enterprises proceed, had, 
nevertheless, become, by the apathy of its citizens 
and their absolute desertion of all their civic 
duties, the victim and the prey of a gang of politi- 
cal miscreants whose villainies were without a 
parallel. Every avenue and department of the 
municipal service fairly reeked with corruption. 
Robbers sat without disguise at the head of the 
Department of Public Works, in the City and 
County Treasury, in the administration of the 
Central Park, and their hirelings and dependents 
filled almost every office. From these points of 
power the band of conspirators exercised a gross 

61 



THE TWEED EING 

and brutal tyranny over the people of the city, 
more grinding than civilized men had before sub- 
mitted to. 

Far worse than " taxation without representa- 
tion/ ' which all history has declared to be suffi- 
cient cause for revolution, it was highway robbery 
under the pretense of taxation, with no pretense 
of representation whatever, and before we knew it 
we had been literally plundered of twenty millions 
of the public money. At last the press — true to its 
functions as the guardian of the public liberties — 
sounded the alarm. The people awoke from their 
long slumber, assembled in haste for mutual pro- 
tection, and resolved, as the only remedy for the 
wrongs they had suffered, to take their own af- 
fairs into their own hands. And now two months 
of vigorous and united action have changed the 
whole aspect of affairs. The general scorn and 
contempt which rested upon us has, in all quar- 
ters, been changed to sympathy and fraternal 
encouragement, because we have shown a determi- 
nation to take care of ourselves, and have re- 
solved, at all hazards, and by whatever means 
may be necessary, peacefully if we can, but if not, 
then in some other way, to recover our mutilated 
liberties and vindicate our civil rights. 

It is true that we still wear the shackles, and 
our necks still show a fearful galling from the col- 
lars they have borne so long. But we no longer 
wear our fetters meekly, and are prepared for the 
struggle, however desperate, that shall cast them 
off. We no longer kiss the rod of our oppressors, 

62 



THE TWEED EING 

but now have snatched it from their grasp, and 
mean henceforward to give blow for blow. We no 
longer lie still with the bedclothes over our heads, 
pretending to be asleep, while these burglars are 
rifling our pockets and our safes, but have raised 
the hue and cry, and joined in full pursuit, and 
mean not to let go the chase until we have hunted 
the scoundrels down. 

Eealizing at last the deadly peril into which 
the body politic had been plunged by your own 
shameful neglect, and convinced that it could only 
be rescued and restored by the removal of the 
cause of the mischief and the return of all good 
citizens to the performance of their public duties, 
you created the Executive Committee of Seventy 
to represent and to guide you in that 
great enterprise, to search out and ascertain the 
full extent of the mischief that had been done, 
to recover the moneys that had been stolen, to 
bring to justice the chief criminals, to summon to 
your aid the legislative and executive powers of 
the State, to obtain the repeal of the City Charter, 
to exterminate from office the Eing and all its 
minions, and finally, in the words of your resolu- 
tion of September 4, " To assist, sustain and di- 
rect a united effort by the citizens of New York, 
without reference to party, to obtain a good gov- 
ernment and honest officers to administer it." 

It was the fulfilment of this latter duty, so 
far as it might be accomplished, that was in- 
trusted to the Committee on Elections, whose pro- 
ceedings your chairman has requested me to re- 

63 



THE TWEED RING 

port to you. It was obvious at the outset, in the 
conduct of this great movement of reform, that 
you had no idea of confiding your municipal af- 
fairs to either of the political parties to the ex- 
clusion of the other, and that both alike, so far as 
their past participation in those affairs was con- 
cerned, were the objects of your supreme distrust. 
You had no choice between a corrupt Democrat 
and a corrupt Republican, and were perfectly 
well aware that the Ring of malefactors who had 
usurped the powers of taxation and government, 
and were enriching themselves without labor at 
the public cost, was composed of political prosti- 
tutes from both the party organizations, and 
that they found the real secret of their power in 
the mutual betrayal of their trusts, and if better 
chance or greater cunning had given to the base 
men of one party the lion's share of the spoils, it 
was only the want of opportunity, and not of evil 
purpose, that had prevented their associates of 
the other party from perpetrating just as great 
iniquities, and carrying off just as much plunder. 
With a view, therefore, to rally the good men of 
all parties, and of every creed, color and condi- 
tion to a united effort for an honest government, 
your Committee on Elections was composed of 
equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, 
and they were instructed to forget their politics, 
to confer with all organizations, parties, societies 
and individuals who might desire to co-operate 
for the common good, and to bring about as nearly 
as possible a complete union of all citizens upon 

64 



THE TWEED RING 

one reform ticket for all the city and county of- 
fices and for the Senate and Assembly. With 
the State tickets it was wisely concluded that 
we had nothing whatever to do, since the question 
of city reform united the support of the honest 
portion of both the great parties of the State. 
To these directions the Committee on Elections 
have faithfully adhered. They have preferred 
none because they were Republicans. They have 
rejected none because they were Democrats. 
They have counselled with all and closed their 
doors upon none. 

They claim credit for some forbearance, for 
much patience and an unfailing purpose to unite 
the entire opposition to Tammany, and they are 
happy to announce to you that that purpose has 
been substantially accomplished, and that, with 
some few exceptions, of which I shall presently 
speak, a substantial union of the friends of reform 
will speak with one voice and cast a consolidated 
vote on election day. It was manifest from the 
first that the movement which you inaugurated 
at your first meeting had aroused a response as 
hearty as the call was loud, that all classes of so- 
ciety were profoundly agitated, and that a general 
determination pervaded the community to drive 
out the Ring, and put honest men in their places. 
But there was a total want of organization ; there 
was a countless number of associations, each with 
a distinct head and under a different name. There 
were all kinds of Democrats, hailing from all sorts 
of halls, generally with harmonious and musical 

65 



THE TWEED EING 

names, but not very harmonious spirits. There 
were Apollo Hall Democrats and reform Demo- 
crats, German Democrats, independent Democrats 
and Union Democrats, lukewarm Democrats and 
Democrats fiery hot, but none, I believe, profess- 
edly cold-water Democrats. And even the Eepub- 
licans were divided. We found that the Eepubli- 
can party of this city had what it was pleased to 
call " wings " ; and although we Eepublicans, 
when gathered in family council, don't allow any 
criticism from outsiders, yet I in this Union meet- 
ing, as a Eepublican, from the beginning to the 
end, devoted to its general policy and proud of its 
record, may be permitted to say here that these 
two wings of the Eepublican party in this city 
are the strangest and most uncomfortable pair 
of pinions with which any political bird was ever 
encumbered. They will neither fold together, 
spread together nor flap together. Each goes in 
a different direction and on its own hook, and 
is more likely to hit the other and make the 
feathers fly from that than from any common 
enemy. 

Besides, like the wings of an ostrich, they are 
very small compared with the general bulk of 
the bird, and seem designed for no better pur- 
pose than to make a great noise and flapping and 
frighten innocent persons and young political 
children ; and, as to locomotion and progress, why, 
a bird with one wing would get along a great deal 
better. But, nevertheless, out of all this jarring 
discord and these many associations pulling in 

66 



THE TWEED RING 

different ways, and each having purposes of its 
own to serve, second only to the great object of 
reform, and sometimes, I am sorry to say, not 
quite second to that, substantial harmony has 
grown at last, and, especially in regard to the 
county ticket, there has been a perfect union. So 
that, for once, we can show you all the different 
kinds of Democrats of whom I have spoken feed- 
ing at the same trough; and as to the Republi- 
cans, the lions of the Custom House are actually 
lying in the same bed with Horace Greeley's 
lambs. 

And here your Committee on Elections is 
bound to recognize and acknowledge with grati- 
tude the very great service rendered to the cause 
of union and reform by a body of citizens assem- 
bled in a convention which was, I believe, without 
a precedent in our political history. The Coun- 
cil of Political Reform, an organization created 
some time ago for the general purposes indicated 
by its name, composed of respectable citizens of 
all parties and organized in every ward of the 
city, invited a representation of men of every 
party, creed, nationality, color and class to meet 
in convention and to nominate a complete list of 
officers for the ensuing election, and, having called 
them together, the Council of Reform left them to 
take their own counsels and action, uninfluenced 
by any policy or dictation of its own. The con- 
vention so assembled at Chickering Hall embraced 
every interest in the whole city. There were gath- 
ered in harmonious action, Democrats and Re- 

67 



THE TWEED SING 

publicans and men who had never voted with 
either, Christians and Israelites, Catholics and 
Protestants, Americans, Germans, Irishmen, Ital- 
ians and Frenchmen, capitalists and workingmen, 
rich men and poor men — all under the one name 
of citizen, and all in the single interest of reform. 
They selected, with infinite care and after a 
broad survey of the whole field, a ticket which, 
with some inconsiderable changes, not only re- 
ceived our approval and indorsement, but that also 
of the united councils of both branches of Repub- 
licans and the Democratic reform party, and that 
is the county ticket which we present for your 
suffrage. It consists of the nominees for Judges 
and for Register, and bears at its head the name 
of George C. Barrett for Justice of the Supreme 
Court. Of Judge Barrett, I need not speak to 
this company at length. An Irishman by birth, 
but a loyal American by education and growth, 
thoroughly identified in spirit with his adopted 
country — he is young, talented, well qualified by 
professional education and experience for the 
office — is the spontaneous choice of the great body 
of the reform party, and determined, if elected, to 
do honor to his high office. Of his only competi- 
tor for that high office, it is, perhaps, enough to 
say that his name is Thomas A. Ledwith. I de- 
sire to speak only in kindness of Judge Ledwith, 
especially as you, in your wisdom, selected him to 
act with us in the cause of reform. His most 
sanguine friends have not ventured to state that 
he has any qualifications for the station to which 

68 



THE TWEED EING 

he aspires, and so I will waste no time in proving 
that he has none ; bnt this, I think, we may justly 
say, that his nomination by Tammany Hall was 
intended as a deadly blow at the cause of reform, 
and that he is supported by men inside of Tam- 
many, who hope to gain his local support for their 
own candidates ; and by men outside of Tammany, 
who, indeed, at first joined the standard of re- 
form, and began to battle against the walls of that 
stronghold of corruption, intending, not to de- 
stroy it utterly, as we mean to do, but merely to 
make a breach and get inside themselves, and turn 
its guns against us. And so, as soon as the back 
door was open to them, they glided swiftly in, and, 
abandoning the advancing column, joined the 
ranks of our enemies. Clearly, then, it is our 
first duty to defeat Ledwith, and we shall do it. 
Of the rest of the judiciary ticket, which is ap- 
proved and endorsed by everybody outside of 
Tammany, and of the gallant German who is our 
nominee for Eegister, I need not speak. In re- 
gard to the Aldermanic ticket, you will observe 
a discrepancy as to six out of fifteen names be- 
tween the nominations approved by us and the 
names placed upon the combined tickets of Apollo 
Hall and the Eepublicans. We endeavored to 
make that union perfect, but the trouble lay with 
one wing of the Eepublicans, who offered us 
names, some of which we disapproved of and re- 
jected, but offered on our part to accept an equal 
number of unexceptionable names in their stead, 
which was declined. But if our united forces 

69 



THE TWEED KING 

prevail, we shall have a working majority of the 
Board of Aldermen, and as that body will come 
into existence only to expire, we mnst be content 
with that. 

And now, not to weary you with any more de- 
tails, we commend to your support the entire 
ticket of Assemblymen, from the First District to 
the Twenty-first, who have received our endorse- 
ment. We have studied the whole island, from 
Kingsbridge to the Battery. We have taken coun- 
sel from all sides in every district, and with no 
other object in view than to combine and concen- 
trate the entire strength of the movement upon 
unexceptionable candidates — have made the selec- 
tions which have been announced by the press. 
We could choose but one in each district, and 
have doubtless disappointed the others. But now 
that the choice has been made, if it shall be rati- 
fied by you a new aspect will be put upon the 
situation in each district. It will henceforth be 
certain that the Tammany candidates or your 
candidates must certainly be elected. There is no 
room in any district for any third man, and if any 
faction, party or organization in the name of re- 
form shall insist on going to the polls with any 
other candidate than the one adopted by you, they 
can only do so in the interest of Tammany Hall. 
Honest motives will be no excuse — such votes 
must tell for Tammany and against the people — 
and we must all labor in our respective Assembly 
districts to concentrate the whole strength of the 

70 



THE TWEED EING 

movement upon these candidates. Here in the 
Assembly districts we fight the fatal battle of this 
war. If we fail to carry the Legislature, this city 
will not be a safe place for honest men to dwell 
in, the reign of the Eing will be perpetuated, and 
under the disguise of a city government, rapine 
and plunder will continue to destroy our rights 
and absorb our property, and life itself will be in 
peril. 

There is but one subject more to which I am 
instructed by the Committee on Elections to in- 
voke your attention, but that is so full of fearful 
peril and iniquity that I fairly shudder to enter 
upon it. Fellow citizens, you have thoroughly 
alarmed your wicked enemies in the very heart 
of their stronghold; they tremble before your 
righteous wrath; they see the fatal halters dan- 
gling very near their necks, and have resolved 
upon a desperate and wicked resistance. Satis- 
fied that upon a fair vote they will be outnumbered 
and driven from the field, they have resorted to 
a most damnable and deadly plot to circumvent 
and defeat you. They have determined by a 
false canvass of the votes to count their candi- 
dates in, and so to murder your majorities. To 
this end, the Mayor, in whom the city charter has 
vested the sole power of appointment, has given 
to the Eing the whole list of inspectors and poll 
clerks throughout the city, and with them the ex- 
clusive power to count and declare the votes. And 
he has refused the formal request made to Kim by 
the opposition, for a recognition of their rights 

71 



THE TWEED EING 

under the law and their share of those appoint- 
ments. Here, then, is a crime before which all 
the other villainies of the Eing pale and dwindle. 
The theft even of twenty millions of dollars is 
nothing when compared with this high-handed and 
atrocious blow at the very life of the State. 

" Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, 
nothing ; 
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands. ' ' 

But this wholesale niching and slaughter of the 
suffrage is a deadly thrust at the very source and 
fountain of our liberties. Let not him escape the 
responsibility of this matchless crime, who alone 
had the power to prevent it and refused to do so. 
On this one outrage, which involves all the rest, 
let us appeal to our brethren of the State and 
the Nation to come to the rescue of our liberties 
and their own, which it alike imperils. 

But in the meantime what else can we do? 
Why, by attending to our duties on elec- 
tion day, we can watch for and detect the crime, 
and, perhaps, in a great measure, prevent it. 
It is with a view to this duty that our com- 
mittee has appealed to you to close all your 
places of business and to devote the en- 
tire day to your duties as citizens. Do you think 
that these inspectors and poll clerks will dare 
to cheat you before your very eyes, if they 
see by the numerous presence of courageous citi- 
zens at the polls that you are determined to de- 
fend your rights 1 Depend upon it, they will not. 

72 



THE TWEED KING 

But you have everything at stake on that day, and 
I tell you that there is a great and crying need 
of the attendance and the services of just such 
men as compose this audience to aid our commit- 
tee on election day, to man the polls, to defend 
the boxes and to watch the counting of the votes. 
Every substantial and courageous citizen who will 
volunteer is worth twenty hirelings in such a 
service. There are enough of you in this hall to- 
night to defend our rights in every election dis- 
trict and effectually to prevent this meditated 
massacre of your dearest rights. Will you do it ? 
Will you for once sacrifice business, ease and com- 
fort to save so great a stake? We are fearfully 
in earnest in demanding it, and we exhort you, if 
you would not have all your great efforts para- 
lyzed and be defrauded of all your votes, to enlist 
as soldiers for this one day's battle, and to enroll 
your names to-morrow morning at the headquar- 
ters of the committee, to bear your part in this 
decisive contest. 



73 



LOED HOUGHTON 



LORD HOUGHTON 

Address delivered at the Eeception given to Lord Houghton, by 
the Union League Club in New York, November 23, 1875. 

IN seeking this opportunity to pay our respects 
to the distinguished gentleman who now hon- 
ors us with his presence, we certainly could not 
hope by our modest reception to equal the bounte- 
ous hospitality which has been showered upon 
him at the hands of private citizens in every city 
that he has visited — or to add to the warmth of 
that cordial greeting which has attended his steps 
throughout his wanderings in the United States. 
The familiar maxim by which in the earlier years 
of his manhood our guest is believed to have 
trained his Muse, appears to have been practi- 
cally applied in an altered sense to his lordship 
at every stage of his American pilgrimage — 
Nulla dies sine linea. No day without a line to 
come to dinner. Whatever pleasures and what- 
ever perils belong to that peculiar institution of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, as Emerson calls it, he 
must have already fully experienced. We must 
congratulate ourselves and him that he has hap- 
pily survived them all, with health and strength 
still unimpaired, for, having done so, he stands 
before us to-night a living argument to the robust 
and hardy vigor of the British constitution, of 

77 



LORD HOUGHTON 

which he is so worthy a representative. Neither 
can we offer him, at a meeting of the Clnb, the 
charms of the feminine presence with which, if he 
was not misreported on a recent occasion, he has 
been honored and delighted during his stay among 
us. It was only yesterday that I read in the news- 
papers of a high tribute paid by him to the wit 
and the beauty of the women of America. Had 
we known in season that his Lordship cherished 
that gentle enthusiasm, had we supposed it possi- 
ble that a peer of England would be open to those 
tender influences — we might have put in practice 
the theory of natural selection as the occasion 
would have justified, and have surrounded him on 
this last night of his stay in America with such 
a glittering array of loveliness, as would have set 
his " poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling," and 
perhaps some future edition of " Palm Leaves " 
or of " Poems of Many Lands ' ' would have con- 
tained some stanzas to the women of the West 
by Lord Houghton, that in delicacy and sweetness 
would have matched the lyric tributes which 
Monckton Milnes was wont to pay to the far- 
famed graces of the Orient. 

No, we have sought this occasion not so much 
for his own pleasure as for ours, having little 
to offer him but the honest expression of that 
high consideration and regard which has long 
been felt for his lordship in the United States. 
We desired an opportunity to look upon one 
whose name has been associated for a whole 
generation with those things that tend to elevate 

78 



LORD HOUGHTON 

and improve the condition of mankind. Many of 
us from childhood have been accustomed to hear 
of him as one of the men of letters of England, 
who, by their devotion to good learning and po- 
lite literature, have been missionaries of knowl- 
edge and pleasure to all who speak and read the 
English tongue. Some of us have read his books. 

— And books, we know, 
Are a substantial world, both pure and good, 
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood 
Our pastime and our happiness will grow. 

We have heard by tradition and report of his 
generous sympathy for humanity in all its suffer- 
ing forms, that the cause of oppressed nationali- 
ties has found in him a constant advocate and 
friend — whether Poland, the bleeding victim of 
her rapacious neighbor — or Italy, suffering the 
accumulated miseries of centuries — or Greece, the 
classic heir of ancient woes. We have been told 
also that the promptings of a generous and manly 
heart have led him to support at home all meas- 
ures for the reform and amelioration of the crimi- 
nal classes, and to alleviate the distresses of the 
poor, and that he wears the well-earned title of a 
friend of humanity. We have not forgotten his 
stout assertions of the right of freedom in re- 
ligion, and remember his statement made when it 
was not yet altogether popular — that " religious 
equality is the natural birthright of every 
Briton." 

But, after all, the chief and immediate title of 

79 



LORD HOUGHTON 

Lord Houghton to our special regard and grati- 
tude is in the manly stand lie took with certain 
other liberal statesmen of England on the occasion 
of our late Civil War, by which they proved them- 
selves the steadfast and effective friends alike of 
their own country and of ours. Not more from 
political considerations, I think, than from a natu- 
ral, instinctive, Anglo-Saxon love of fair play — 
because they could not help it — they insisted — and 
none more emphatically than our guest of this 
evening — that England should observe a real and 
honest friendship to America. To borrow words 
of his own: 

Great thoughts, great feelings came to them, 
Like instincts, unawares. 

He will pardon me, I know, for refreshing your 
recollection from the Debates with regard to one 
or two things which he said in his place in the 
House of Commons. When the seizure of the 
Alexandra was under discussion, in April, 1863, 
which you will remember as one of the very dark- 
est periods we ever passed through — it was in 
that month that President Lincoln, in accordance 
with a resolution of the Senate, set apart a day 
of fasting and prayer for the whole people to 
humble themselves before Almighty God for the 
deadly scourgings of the war — it was then that, 
after hearing some violent words spoken in Par- 
liament tending to measures which, if adopted, 
would force us in our crippled condition into the 
desperate extremity of war with England, he 

80 



LORD HOUGHTON 

said, after regretting the violent language to 
which he had listened : 

Sir: I trust that peace will continue for many reas- 
ons, but above all for this. For us to talk of war, for 
England, armed to the teeth — England, with all her 
wealth and power, to talk of war against a nation in the 
very agonies of her destinies, and torn to the vitals by 
a great civil commotion, is so utterly ungenerous, so re- 
pugnant to every manly feeling, that I cannot conceive 
it possible. Honorable gentlemen opposite talk of act- 
ing in a gallant spirit. Is it to act in a gallant spirit 
for a strong man to fight a man with his arms tied, with 
his eyes blinded? And that is what you propose to do — 
you, with the wealth and power of England — when you 
seek to promote war with the United States. 

Happily for us such friendly and generous 
words and counsels prevailed, and we escaped that 
untold calamity. And again, a little earlier, when 
our blockade, the maintenance of which was so ab- 
solutely essential to the successful prosecution of 
the war, pressed so hard upon their own domes- 
tic prosperity as to provoke appeals to the British 
Government to disregard and ignore it, he 
scouted the idea, and after arguing that the block- 
ade was as effective as in the nature of things it 
was possible to make it, he said: 

I have always regarded a disruption of the American 
Union as a great calamity for the world, believing with 
De Tocqueville that it would do more to destroy political 
liberty and arrest the progress of mankind than any 
other event that can possibly be imagined. * * * The 

81 



LORD HOUGHTON 

Americans are our fellow-countrymen. I shall always 
call them so. I see in them our own character repro- 
duced with all its merits and all its defects. They are 
as vigorous, as industrious, as powerful, as honest and 
truthful as ourselves. And I can never for a moment 
disassociate the fortunes of Great Britain from the for- 
tunes of the United States of America. 

No wonder that Lord Houghton finds many 
friends in America. I need not assure him that 
we appreciate and reciprocate these generous sen- 
timents, uttered in those dark hours of our sorest 
need, and that we join our prayers to his for per- 
petual peace and friendship between these two 
nations, that are of but one interest, one tongue, 
and one blood. 

In the name, my lord, of this Club, which may 
modestly claim to represent a portion of the in- 
telligence and the public spirit of New York, sup- 
ported as it is to-night by the presence of her 
Chief Magistrate and of many other eminent citi- 
zens, who, without regard to politics or creed, 
have assembled with it in your honor, I bid you a 
most cordial and hearty welcome. 



82 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

Address delivered at the Nineteenth Annual Commencement of the 
Columbia Law School, New York, May 16, 1878. 



THE pleasant duty has been assigned to me of 
welcoming these graduates, all overflowing 
with youth and therefore with hope, to the ranks 
of an honorable profession which one of the great- 
est of its members has declared to be as ancient 
as magistracy, as noble as virtue, as necessary as 
justice. As an elder brother, with all my heart I 
bid them a most cordial and hearty welcome; and 
your cheering and applauding presence is suffi- 
cient to assure them what a vast company of 
clients awaits them, embracing the grave and the 
gay, the severe and the lively, the strong, the 
rich and the fair— so that it remains only for 
themselves by their lives and labors to deter- 
mine whether they shall make of this arduous 
calling on which they are entering a noble and 
beneficent science or a low and degrading trade, 
for it must be the one or the other according to 
the spirit in which it is pursued. 

When we read in the census that there are al- 
ready 60,000 lawyers in the United States, it might 
seem at first blush that the addition of 200 more 
in a single group was altogether superfluous— and 
that there is danger of having too much even of 

85 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

so good a thing. Have we not lawyers enough? asks 
the press daily. Have we not too many? echoes 
the heedless voice of society. I answer no; we 
have not honest lawyers enough— not healthy 
lawyers enough; not learned lawyers enough, and 
as the Columbia College Law School is expected 
to produce none but the best, we may safely hail 
the coming of all she chooses to send into the 
world. 

That there is a considerable amount of idle and 
thoughtless prejudice in the world against 
lawyers cannot be denied, but that is because— 
and this it will be well for these young gentlemen 
to remember— the whole profession has to suffer 
for the faults and vices of its worst and lowest 
members. We are a band of brothers, and if a 
single brother turns out to be a rascal, as now and 
then unfortunately does happen, why the fair 
name of the whole family suffers with him, of 
course. 

The Pilgrim Fathers of New England appear 
to have had a unique and intensified grudge 
against the craft, doubtless because the envious 
clergy ruled them with a rod of iron, and wished 
to maintain an undivided sway. So for the first 
fifty years of the colony they got along with- 
out any, and then with sparing hand the General 
Court admitted two attorneys to practice, but 
with the special proviso that they should do noth- 
ing to darken the cause or confuse the counsels 
of the Court— a rule which I fear might decimate 
the profession, if strictly applied to-day. So the 

$6 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

press, arrogant in its unbridled power, too often 
teems with unfriendly criticisms of our conduct. 
The stage, catering to the taste of the galleries— 
not filled as they are to-night— produces the typi- 
cal lawyer in the role of an unscrupulous and 
vulgar pettifogger. And English fiction never 
tires of reproducing the same type of character at 
our expense, because no play and no novel is 
quite perfect without its villain, and we must con- 
fess that nobody can fill that part better than a 
wicked lawyer, who violates his oath and perverts 
to the destruction of mankind the talents, the 
learning and the skill which were designed only 
for its protection and to promote its happiness. 
But however satire and fiction may find enter- 
tainment in the vices and frailties of our more 
weak and wicked brethren, the honest and unan- 
swerable voice of history tells quite another 
story. It exhibits a learned, a fearless and an in- 
dependent bar as the pride and ornament of every 
civilized country. It shows that many great tri- 
umphs of statesmanship have been achieved by its 
disciples; that wherever great blows have been 
struck for the rights of man, some brave lawyer 
has been in the thickest of the fight; that the 
champions of popular liberty have been recruited 
always from our ranks; that whenever the tor- 
rents of arbitrary power have threatened to over- 
whelm and engulf it, some Coke or some Erskine, 
scorning the wrath of kings and scouting the 
friendship of princes, has stood forth in its de- 
fense; and that, on the other hand, when popu- 

87 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

lar fury rose in a tidal wave for the destruction 
of the innocent victims, some Otis was found 
standing in the breach. In short, if the personal 
liberty of all under the protection of equal laws 
is the end of government and the object of civili- 
zation, then lawyers can safely challenge the men 
of other professions to show a larger share in the 
whole work of human progress. 

In view, then, of the possibilities of great and 
heroic service to mankind which the legal pro- 
fession holds out to its ardent and able votaries, 
and of the high and useful duty of promoting jus- 
tice, which its daily pursuit involves, I deem it 
no idle form of words to congratulate at all times 
those who stand upon its threshold, qualified and 
equipped to enter upon it. But never, as it seems 
to me, has there been a more fortunate and prom- 
ising time in our country than this, for you who 
with earnest hearts and singleness of purpose pro- 
pose to devote your lives to this useful and honor- 
able calling. While you who now stand in the first 
flush of manhood were yet hardly out of your 
cradles, the land was deluged in the blood of civil 
carnage, and all the horrors of the greatest war 
of the century were devastating its fields and lay- 
ing waste its homes. In the midst of arms the 
laws were silent and the administration of justice 
was practically suspended throughout half our 
borders. During all the years of your boyhood 
and youth the evil results of the war on the civil 
and social life of the people were being made 
manifest. Eioting for a few years in that wan- 

88 



THE YOUNG LAWYEE 

ton extravagance, that drnnken dream of imagi- 
nary wealth, which was begotten by the flood of 
worthless paper money made necessary by the 
war, onr people long since awoke to their fatal 
error, and five long and miserable years of bank- 
ruptcy and financial rnin which followed that era 
of bloated fulness are bnt just drawing to a close. 

I know it is a common delusion that lawyers 
flourish in the midst of all these miseries, and 
fatten like vultures by devouring the carrion of 
commerce and picking the bones of trade. But 
never was there a more false and hollow delusion. 
Lawyers flourish best when the whole community 
is prosperous, and suffer with all the rest when 
trade and commerce decline. And never I believe 
has the rank and file of the profession suffered 
so severely and been reduced so near to starva- 
tion as in these last miserable years of general 
failure and commercial disaster. 

But even now a brighter day is dawning. These 
countless bankruptcies which are being daily 
recorded are but the wrecks and debris washed 
ashore by a storm that has already passed. We 
can thank God that the public credit at least is 
already restored; the skies are already clearing. 
Old fashioned economy and honest living have 
come again; and you, whose professional lives 
are all in the future, will see a new and grander 
era of prosperity than the past has witnessed. 
When all these idlers in turn have been driven 
back, as they will be, where they belong, to work 
upon the soil— the true source of all our Ameri- 

89 



THE YOUNG LAWYEB 

can wealth— these fifty millions of people, all 
working for an honest living, will bring back 
again the golden age, whose wealth and pros- 
perity shall be as real and solid as that of this 
paper one has been delusive and imaginary. 

But I would not for a moment encourage the 
thought of holding out the law under any circum- 
stances as a money-making profession. It loses 
its character as a liberal science as soon as money- 
making becomes the ruling motive. If that is 
your object I advise you to abandon all idea of be- 
coming lawyers, and seek for some more congenial 
and profitable pursuit. You may be sure that 
every tallow chandler and pork merchant will 
outstrip you in the race for wealth. Mr. Web- 
ster's oft-quoted saying that "Lawyers work 
hard, live well and die poor" is true in nine cases 
out of ten, and always will be. The love of money 
is the root of all evil in the law as in the rest 
of life, and when it once becomes the fashion the 
degradation of the profession has already begun. 

The lawyer who is inspired to promote litiga- 
tion for the sake of profit to himself is not a whit 
better than the doctor who should scatter broad- 
cast in the community the seeds of pestilence, for 
the fees which it might bring in — and the advocate 
or the counsellor who defends the public or the 
private plunderer for a share of his spoils is justly 
condemned as an accomplice in his crimes. On 
the other hand, honorable poverty has been in 
every generation the true cradle of professional 
character and success. No other motive but the 

90 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

spur of necessity seems powerful enough to fur- 
nish the aspirant for forensic honors with the 
necessary grit, and to carry him through the toil, 
the drudgery and the self-sacrifice which alone 
will enable him to master the science and to raise 
his head above the dead level of mediocrity. Lord 
Eldon spoke from his own actual experience, and 
told a hard truth, when to the young barrister who 
asked him the way to eminence he answered: "If 
you've got any money spend it. If your wife's 
got any spend that, and then work like a dog till 
you are Lord Chancellor. ' ' And Erskine, that 
most consummate of modern advocates, when he 
made his debut at the English bar just one hun- 
dred years ago in that splendid achievement in 
Westminster Hall, which dazzled the eyes of the 
British public, and raised him at one leap from 
obscurity and poverty to fame and competence, 
told the same story of himself, when amid the 
congratulations that poured in upon him, being 
asked how he had had the courage to stand up 
so boldly against Lord Mansfield, he answered 
that he thought his little children, whom he had 
left hungry at home that morning, were plucking 
his robe, and he heard their voices crying, "Now, 
father, is the time to get us bread. ' ' 

And now, as you have asked me to address you, 
I suppose you expect me to give you a little ad- 
vice ; and whether you expect it or not, I will ven- 
ture to do so, since advice is about all that lawyers 
ever have to give. I should say, then, that the 
sound practical lawyer is composed of three parts 

91 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

—the physical, the moral and the mental, and 
it is hard to tell which of the three is the most im- 
portant ingredient. I place the physical first, 
because without a sonnd and healthy body, a 
lawyer can no more reach the high places of the 
profession, than a spavined and broken-winded 
racer conld win the Ascot Cup. Those ancient 
anatomists who located the seat of the mind in 
the stomach were not so far wrong, and I have 
known lawyers with that great organ iron-clad, 
who achieved a tolerable measure of apparent 
success with a very moderate allowance of brains. 
The bar, at any moment you choose to survey it, 
furnishes in a physical point of view the happi- 
est illustration of Darwin's great theory of the 
survival of the fittest, that can be found in mod- 
ern society. At the word "go" all start on the 
same line with equal hope and expectation; but 
one after another, the sick, the infirm, the fat, the 
lazy and the self-indulgent, drop out of the race, 
and a few gaunt champions maintain the contest 
for the foremost places in middle and later life. 
In these days of intense action and close compe- 
tition there is no career which calls for more ath- 
letic training and more heroic regimen than that 
of the ambitious advocate in one of our great 
cities. I should say, then, as the first piece of ad- 
vice to every young lawyer, look out for your 
body; don't go into the struggle unless certain 
that you can rely upon that, and then preserve and 
strengthen it by exercise, by temperance, and all 
the sleep that it will hold. 

92 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

And next in the scale I place the moral ele- 
ment, as necessary to the composition of the sound 
practical lawyer. If you can't be honest, and 
must still live by your wits, why, in heaven's 
name, choose some other calling— any other 
rather than this, whose special province and duty 
it is to aid in dealing out exact and equal jus- 
tice to all men. Turn peddler, turn anything you 
can lay your hand to, but don't try to turn a dis- 
honest penny in the sacred temple of justice. I 
know there are sometimes dangerous examples 
of wicked lawyers who have grown rich by chi- 
canery and plunder, and rare and exceptional 
cases of men reaching high places at the bar, who 
had thrown their conscience overboard, and ex- 
hibited the loathsome and disgusting spectacle of 
great talents and opportunities given them for the 
highest good of their fellowmen, perverted into 
instruments of fraud and crime. But you may be 
sure the scorn and contempt of mankind pursue 
them, and better were it for any one of you that 
a millstone were hung about his neck and be cast 
into the sea than to aspire to follow after such 
false lights. So, too, there are quacks at the bar 
as well as in the doctor 's office, but generally their 
prosperity soon fails them; first the profession 
spots them and then the community, and by and 
by they lose their clients and go into politics, 
where their peculiar gifts and pretensions find 
more appropriate scope. The fact is that in every 
liberal profession whose privileges are undefined 
as ours are, it is only the conscience of the indi- 

93 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

vidual practitioner that can save the whole craft 
from quackery, and so my second piece of advice 
to you is to keep in your sound bodies somewhere 
a conscience ever lively and quick and cultivated, 
if you would honor the calling to which you as- 
pire. 

And, thirdly, it must be admitted that, next 
in importance to sound health and clear con- 
science, brains are necessary to complete the 
qualifications for admission to the bar. Genius 
will do, of course, if you happen to have it, 
but as you probably have not, I wouldn't count 
on that. Genius is a century plant. One cen- 
tury may produce an Erskine and the next a 
Webster, but it isn't to be looked for in every 
graduating class, and so I would advise you to 
fall back on common sense. Common sense and 
common honesty combined with uncommon in- 
dustry will make a successful lawyer, and give a 
man an honorable place in any generation at the 
bar. But let no man imagine that in our profes- 
sion he can travel on his intellectual muscle alone, 
however good its fibre may be, without lifelong 
study and unremitting labor. Doubtless you feel 
more learned now— fresh from your lectures and 
text-books— than you will at any future period of 
your professional life. It takes several years for 
the faithful student of law to find out how little 
he knows and how much he has to learn. Of 
course Professor Dwight has taught you many 
things, but if his reputation does him justice, not 
more than a hundredth part of what he knows— 

94 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

and it will take you many years yet to master the 
other ninety and nine. The bane of our profes- 
sion of late has been the dangerous facility of ad- 
mission to the bar after an infinitesimal term of 
study, and we owe the Court of Appeals a great 
debt of gratitude for its recent order by which 
even the graduates of the Columbia College Law 
School are required to add another year of prac- 
tical study, before they can be admitted to prac- 
tice as attorneys. Jerrold's advice to the young 
author may be taken to heart by every candidate 
for admission to the bar. "Don't take down the 
shutters until you've got something to show in 
the window." 

And even with the present prolonged term, our 
preparation here in America is far short of what 
it ought to be, and far behind that which many 
foreign schools demand. Study, then, all the law 
you can and be ready for your opportunity, which 
sooner or later comes to every man. If it finds 
him ready it bears him on to honor and success. 
But the reason why the whole history of the bar 
is strewn with failures, is that the opportunity, 
when it does come, fails to find the lawyer ready 
to embrace and improve it. And while I am on 
the subject, let me urge every man of you, how- 
ever much he may study the law, to study daily 
something else. Ours is not only a learned but a 
liberal profession, and no more stupid notion ever 
prevailed than that a good lawyer is hurt by the 
highest culture in some other direction. The 
daily practice of the law without some liberal 

95 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

culture does narrow and benumb the faculties, 
and unfit them for anything outside the furrowed 
rut of practice. I know of few spectacles so 
pitiable as that of a successful lawyer, past mid- 
dle life, satiated with the gains and even perhaps 
with the honors of a generous practice, who finds 
himself tired already of his profession, and yet 
unable to do anything else or enjoy anything else, 
because he has long since forgotten everything 
else that he ever knew, or perhaps never cared 
to know anything else. 

And so I say, add some other subject or study 
to your legal studies, and don't let go of it when 
you get into busy life. Every lawyer should have 
a hobby for his mind to ride in the open air of 
knowledge, and ride it every day— history, 
science, politics, language, literature— anything 
rather than law alone. So only can you be wholly 
true in manhood to the dreams of your youth, and 
carry their freshness with you into maturer 
years. 



96 



SALEM 



SALEM 

Address delivered at the Fifth Half Century Anniversary of the 

Landing of John Endicott, at Salem, Massachusetts. 

Salem, September 18, 1878. 

THE Salem people abroad for whom you bid 
me speak, take, I am sure, a lively interest 
in this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
the landing of Governor Endicott. Not indeed 
that the blood of Endicott has ever wandered far 
or in copious streams beyond the borders of New 
England! The fact is that the Endicotts, the 
Winthrops and the Saltonstalls have flourished 
too well upon the parent stock, and have been too 
much prized at home to be driven, except on rare 
occasions, by inclination or by necessity, to seek 
their fortunes beyond the domains of New Eng- 
land, which they helped to plant and to establish. 
See how they present themselves before us to-day. 
Fair types of all the past! Endicott, the supreme 
judge, well representing the old colonial gover- 
nor! Winthrop, bringing to the shrine of his 
honored ancestry a personal fame which is bet- 
ter, far better, than to have been the governor of 
any State, even of Massachusetts! Saltonstall, 
my respected teacher in the law, the most worthy 
son of a man whom all Salem has ever delighted 
to honor! But after all a great share of the glory 

99 



SALEM 

of Endicott and of Winthrop was in their follow- 
ing, in that band of devoted followers who came 
with them and after them, and helped them to 
make their great enterprise a success — those cul- 
tured gentlemen ; those sturdy yeomen, all of the 
purest English stock, who established and extended 
the boundaries of this ancient city, who organ- 
ized, under the guidance of Endicott, its first 
church, who built its first houses, who laid out 
its first streets, and whose descendants after- 
wards, in many generations, started its com- 
merce and pressed it to the furthest confines of 
the globe, so as to make the name of Salem re- 
spected and honored on the shores of all the con- 
tinents. It is from these men that we trace our 
proud lineage, and it is this that makes the sons 
of Salem proud of the place of their birth. 

Of course, Mr. President, it requires great 
forecast for a man to select a birthplace of which 
he shall always be proud; but he must indeed be 
an unreasonable creature, who having America 
for a continent and Massachusetts for a State, 
Essex for a county and Salem for a native town, 
is not entirely satisfied. Of course a man born 
anywhere can get along somehow. I suppose 
that the native of Topsfield, or of Middleton, or 
of Beverly, if he repents promptly, and moves 
into Salem and does well there, may plead some 
excuse for his original sin, and if he be of a lively 
imagination may even begin to boast of it. Why, 
Cicero boasted of being born at Arpinum, and 
Euf us Choate on Hog Island ; but it was after the 

100 



SALEM 

one had become the great orator of Rome, and the 
other of Boston, and so, by their own fame, as it 
were, had extended the boundaries of the cities 
of their adoption to embrace the humble, but, 
thanks to them, historic places of their birth. 

But Salem, Mr. President, is so old, so queer, 
so unique, so different from all other places upon 
which the sun in his western journey looks down, 
so full of grand historical reminiscences, so typi- 
cal of everything that has ever occurred in the an- 
nals of American life, that he who has had the 
good luck to be born here may really claim it as 
a peculiar distinction. You have heard all day, to 
the going down of the sun, of its historic glories, 
and I will not repeat them to your additional fa- 
tigue; but I want to remind you of one thing, 
and that is that the man who is born in Salem 
must pay the penalty of that distinction. And 
chiefly in being just a little older to the cubic inch 
than any other man born at exactly the same mo- 
ment in any other part of North America. How, 
sir, could it possibly be otherwise, with human 
beings born and bred in these old houses, which 
have cradled so many of our race for upwards of 
two centuries, that humanity itself has got used 
to being started here, and finds itself an old story 
at the beginning? I wish to suggest it as an in- 
teresting and at the same time subtle inquiry for 
the scientists of the Essex Institute to 
compare the new-born Salem baby with 
an infant born at the same moment in Kansas, or 
Colorado, or Montana. I venture to say that the 

101 



SALEM 

microscope would disclose a physiological differ- 
ence. The microscope would ascertain a slight, 
perhaps a very slight mould of antiquity, but 
which all the waters of Wenham could never wash 
off. How can a man born in Derby street or Nor- 
man street— Norman, who came over with Co- 
nant, who was here long before Endicott arrived 
— or Essex street — a highway for the Indians be- 
fore even Conant thought of coming— how can 
such a man ever feel like a new and absolutely 
young creature? No, Mr. President, he can not 
do it. This stale flavor and tinge is bred in our 
bones. It is in the marrow, it is in the red cor- 
puscles of the blood, it is in the roots of the tongue 
and of the hair, and you can no more rub it out 
than the farmers of Massachusetts can weed out 
the white weed and the woad-wax that Governor 
Endicott brought over as choice garden plants. 
Friction with the world doesn't destroy it in the 
least. 

And so it is that you may know a Salem man 
wherever you meet him, the world over. He car- 
ries about him a little "Auld lang syne" that 
shows where he came from. Sometimes it is in 
the cut of his jib, and sometimes of his coat; 
sometimes it is the way in which he cuts across 
a street corner, always slanting, never at right 
angles; or from his style of shortening things, as 
the way he utters some familiar words. He never 
takes off his c-o-a-t but his c5te; he never rides 
upon the road, but always on the r5de; and if you 
should pick up a final g, in " nig," you may be 

102 



SALEM 

pretty sure that some of the Salem people are the 
unfo lunate ones who have dropped it; but if 
you can hear him say " git," of course you will 
know his very origin and almost the street from 
which he came. Now in this family meeting, as 
an illustration of this subject, perhaps you will 
pardon me for telling a little personal anecdote. 
A short time ago I was arguing a case in our court 
of appeals at Albany with some earnestness, and 
there sat by me a gentleman bred and born in 
the South. He listened with attention, and when 
I got through he congratulated me, " but," 
said he, ' ' I would have given a hundred dollars if 
you hadn't said ' git.' " Well, Mr. President, how 
could I help it? Governor Endicott said it, all 
my progenitors in this town have said it for two 
hundred and fifty years, and so, I believe it is more 
than half right. 

Well, perhaps we ought not to allow a stranger 
to indulge in these free criticisms of ourselves, but 
I am not a stranger. Though not familiar in these 
streets for the last quarter of a century, I claim 
to be a Salemite of the Salemites. My maternal 
ancestors were here for untold generations. They 
must have been here. It is difficult to identify 
their names, because you know when you go back 
eight generations you have about 128 progeni- 
tors, in that degree, and some of them must have 
been here with Conant. They must have gone 
down on the end of Derby wharf with him to wel- 
come Endicott. The orator of the day didn't 
mention the circumstance because he didn't know 

103 



SALEM 

it. You must not smile at that for an anachron- 
ism, because I challenge any antiquarian to go 
down upon that venerable pile and view its foun- 
dations and its structure, and give it anything 
short of an antiquity, long before Endicott 
thought of coming here. Well, they helped to 
raise, these maternal ancestors of mine, helped to 
raise the First Church which it has been the boast 
of the Essex Institute, after 200 years, to resur- 
rect and restore. They were in that hooting and 
howling crowd that followed Cassandra South- 
wick, strapped to a cart's tail and whipped 
through the streets of this ancient city. And 
then later they were in that other procession, with 
death at the head and Cotton Mather at the rear, 
that marched from St. Peters street to Gallows 
Hill with the victims of the witchcraft delusion. 
They were at the North bridge when Colonel Les- 
lie made his unceremonious retreat, and went 
whence he came. They listened to the Declara- 
tion of Independence, first read on Salem com- 
mon; and on the quarter deck and before the 
mast, for many generations, they contributed to 
create, through all the periods of its progress and 
decline, the commerce of Salem. So I claim to be 
to the manor born and to have a right to speak 
of Salem and of Salem institutions as I think. 

And, knowing this, I suppose, Mr. Chairman, 
it is that you have called on me of all this com- 
pany to speak for the Salem people abroad. Well, 
I will say only a few words. We make up the 
great mass of the population of Salem. Almost 

104 



SALEM 

all Salem people go abroad and very few of them 
remain at home. I believe you number about 
25,000 within these ancient walls. We, the Salem 
people abroad, count ourselves by hundreds of 
thousands. You may find us on all continents, 
in every country, in almost every city, on all 
oceans, and on all isles of the sea. We engage in 
all sorts of occupations, providing only they are 
honest— for you will bear me witness, Mr. Chair- 
man, that honesty is a Salem trait. Not to dilate 
upon their virtues and their merits, I would say 
that they are all doing pretty well. I think I may 
say of them, as you have heard said so much to- 
day of their ancestors, that they live lives of 
honesty, of industry, and of economy, and that 
makes up the great staple of Salem character at 
home and abroad. 

They remember with gratitude this ancient 
city, and above all the schools of Salem; and 
what they got in them they regard as her best 
legacy to her departing children. In those palmy 
days of Salem, Mr. Chairman, when I was a 
child, education was no joke. The business of 
life began with us in earnest as soon as we 
had learned to speak. There was no playing or 
dallying for the children till they were seven 
or eight years old, as is now too often the 
case. At three years old the great business of ed- 
ucation must have been fairly started. Why, sir, 
I perfectly remember at the age of two and three- 
quarters being led by the distinguished judge of 
the district court of the southern district of New 

105 



SALEM 

York* — who had then attained the ripe age of 
four, and who I may say in passing, even then ex- 
hibited those marked judicial qualities of mind 
and character which have recently attracted the 
attention of the President of the United States — 
being led by him to that ancient seminary f for be- 
ginners in Sewall street adjoining the black- 
smith's shop of Benjamin Cutts, which as far sur- 
passed all modern kindergartens as these excel 
common infant schools. 

Well, then, at the age of seven, the boys of 
Salem of this district were transferred to the 
central school in Court street, under the shadow 
of the old court house, to be thrashed for the per- 
iod of three years under Abner Brooks, of blessed 
memory. Felt, in his ' ' Annals of Salem, ' ' has 
made one curious and inexcusable blunder, which 
for the truth of history I wish to correct. He de- 
clares that the whipping post that used to stand 
in the rear of the old court house was not used 
after 1805. I know better. I can swear from 
personal knowledge that it was still in active use 
in 1839, and can show you the very spot. Well, 
then we were transferred to the High School 
under the gentle, the patient, the ever faithful 
Kufus Putnam, the best model of perfection in a 
teacher, I believe, that even Salem has ever seen. 

And last, not least, came that glorious old es- 
tablishment in Broad street, the public Latin 
school, the schola publico, prima, which had stood 

* The Hon. William G. Choate. 
f Miss Lewis 's infant school. 

106 



SALEM 

from the foundation of the colony, which sent 
George Downing, who proved to be one of its 
worst boys, to Harvard college to join its first 
class, and which had sent a long procession, two 
hundred years long, of the flower of Essex 
chosen from the homes of Salem, to grad- 
uate at Harvard college; and at last, after 
our time, was merged in the High School. I re- 
joice to have seen, within a few days, our 
old master, still living and walking these streets ; 
and I hope he has been here to-day to 
enjoy the prosperity and gratitude of all his old 
pupils. I am sure they will join with me in 
saying that no living citizen of Salem can show a 
record of so much done for the welfare and good 
name of this city as he. He was harsh sometimes, 
we thought. He had a monogram. They were 
not much in fashion in those days, but he had 
one that he applied to the hands and legs and 
backs of refractory pupils. It was " 0. K. 0. K. 
O. K.," and anybody who went to the public 
Latin school could translate it as "an awful cut 
from Oliver Carlton's awful cowhide.' ' Well, it 
was not as bad as it seemed. It was a most im- 
partial institution, because it mattered nothing at 
all to the master hand that wielded it, whether it 
fell on the aristocratic back of an Endicott or a 
Saltonstall, or the more common cuticle of a 
Choate or a Brown. This we can say with literal 
truth of it, I think, namely, that it was more 
honored in the breach than in the observance. 
And then, the finer arts which Salem added to 
107 



SALEM 

the education which she offered to her children. 
Who has forgotten Jacob Hood, who taught the 
boys pretty much all the music they ever knew? 
His fame as a composer and teacher may be more 
limited than that of Mendelssohn or Liszt, but 
they never had such hard subjects to deal with, 
and his success was wonderful because he taught 
some of us to sing who never had made the at- 
tempt before. And then the lighter and more fan- 
tastic art to which this temple* in which we sit 
was dedicated. I would like to have these tables 
swept away, and see whether we have forgotten 
all the painful teachings of those days. Why, this 
is the very spot; and when I look up and down 
these tables this afternoon and see so many of the 
fair forms we left behind us— we the Salem peo- 
ple who have gone away— how the thirty years 
that have intervened disappear and slip away! 
How young they all appear again, how slender, 
how fresh, how fair! Why, Mr. Chairman, let 
me tell it as an historical incident, that on the 
very spot where you now sit I have seen the 
daughters of Governor Endicott, in the seventh 
generation, take steps that would have won ap- 
plause from their stern Puritan ancestor himself, 
if he had been permitted to look upon them. 

But the day is passed; the sun has already set. 
I wanted to say something of some great names 
that have shed such lustre upon Salem. There is 
one that I will not omit, because, in my judgment, 
and I believe in that of many of the sons and 

* Hamilton Hall, the Assembly Hall of Salem. 
108 



SALEM 

daughters of Salem abroad, it is the dearest and 
most precious jewel in the diadem of imperial 
Salem. I give you the memory of Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne, a native of Salem, descended from her ear- 
liest settlers! So imbued was he with the genius 
of her sons, and so deeply has he enthroned it in 
his matchless works, that though its ancient 
buildings should crumble, though the forests 
should grow again between these historic rivers, 
and the place be forgotten where Salem was, her 
name, her traditions, and the spirit of her history, 
will still be familiar so long as men can read in the 
English tongue "The Twice Told Tales," and 
i l The House of the Seven Gables. ' ' 



109 



HARVARD COMMENCEMENT 

1883 



HARVARD COMMENCEMENT 

1883 

Address delivered at the Harvard Alumni Dinner in Memorial 
Hall, on Commencement Bay, Cambridge, 1883. 

IHAKDLY know how to begin. My head swims 
when I look down from the giddy and some- 
what dangerous elevation to which you have un- 
wittingly raised me. Here have I been seated for 
the last hour between the two horns of a veritable 
dilemma. On the one side the president of the 
university,* on the other His Excellency the Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts,! whom to-day we welcome 
to the hospitalities of Harvard. As to our worthy 
president— you all know him— you know how he 
strikes— always from the shoulder— a true Har- 
vard athlete, and how idle it is for any ordinary 
alumnus to contend with him. And as to His Ex- 
cellency, a long professional observation and some 
experience of him have taught me that he, too, 
like the president, is a safe man to let alone. 

Well, I assure you that I have found a most 
safe and comfortable seat. I have got along splen- 
didly with both by agreeing exactly to everything 
that each of them has said. For you know the 
horns of a dilemna, however perilous they may 
be to their victims, never can come in conflict 
with each other. And so, seated right between 

* President Eliot, t General Butler. 
113 



HAEVAED COMMENCEMENT 

them, if you take care to hold on, as I have done, 
tight to each, you are sure to find safety and re- 
pose. " Medio tutissimus ibis." I accept it as a 
happy omen — prophetic, I hope, of that peace and 
harmony which shall govern this meeting to its 
close. And now, brethren, I am at a loss whether 
to thank you or not for the honor you have done 
me in calling me to preside on this occasion, for 
it was only when the alumni of Harvard had lost 
their head that they invited me to supply its 
place. I sincerely regret the absence from this 
chair to-day of that distinguished gentleman* who 
should have occupied it, in deference to your 
wishes, expressed by your ballots. His character, 
his eloquence and his life-long loyalty to Har- 
vard would have graced and adorned the occa- 
sion and we all lament his absence. But, though 
the association of the alumni is for the moment 
without a head, Harvard College still lives, and 
to-day is younger and fresher, more vigorous and 
more powerful, than ever before. 

With the pious devotion of elder children, we 
have come up here to-day to attend upon our 
venerable Alma Mater in the hour of her annual 
travail, and gather about her couch with patient 
reverence to witness the birth of the latest addi- 
tion to the family— those 205 new pledges of her 
never-failing and ever-renewing creative power. 
We wish them Godspeed on that journey of life 
which they have to-day so auspiciously begun. 
The degree conferred upon them this morning is 

* Senator George Frisbie Hoar. 

114 



HARVARD COMMENCEMENT 

an assurance to the world that they start in the 
race with more or less learning— some of them a 
good deal more and some of them a good deal 
less, but let us hope that every man of them has 
got and carries away with him what is far bet- 
ter than all their learning, and what it has been 
our boast to believe that the training of Harvard 
has always tended to cultivate— an honest and 
manly character, a hatred of all shams and hum- 
bugs, an earnest purpose to make the most of 
themselves, and to serve their times as men and 
their country as good citizens and patriots. 

I think we may well congratulate each other 
upon the dignified and proud attitude which Har- 
vard University now presents to the country and 
to the world, and that she has made more real 
and lasting progress in the last fifteen years than 
in any prior period of her history— a progress 
due in large measure to the hopeful wisdom and 
the tireless energy of President Eliot. He found 
here a local college whose administration, whose 
standard, whose system, had undergone no radi- 
cal change for generations ; and to-day he presents 
her to the world, a great and national university, 
and the national features and relations of Har- 
vard are now its most striking and attractive 
ones. No State— not even Massachusetts— can 
any longer appropriate her. No city, not even 
Boston, can any longer claim her for its own. 
She belongs henceforth to the whole country, and 
is justly regarded at home and abroad as the one 
typical American university. Perhaps we of the 

115 



HARVARD COMMENCEMENT 

alumni who live in other and distant parts of the 
country can appreciate this change better than 
those of you whose lives are spent almost within 
the shadow of her elms. The tide is setting to- 
wards Harvard across the whole continent. Her 
examinations, carried first to New York and then 
to Cincinnati, and then to Chicago, and at last to 
the Pacific Coast, have raised the standard of 
education and the quality of the schools through- 
out the whole country; and this influence is yearly 
increasing. And the diplomas of her professional 
schools now carry into all the States an assur- 
ance of new and increased fitness for the com- 
mencement of professional life. 

The best test of your success, Mr. President, is 
that other colleges are rapidly beginning to adopt 
and accept your systems and your reforms. Even 
the meagre little that Harvard has yet done for 
the education of women is beginning to bear fruit 
elsewhere. To-day, Columbia, forced by the pres- 
sure of public opinion, with tardy and reluctant 
hand, is beginning to dole out to women a few 
stale and paltry crumbs that fall from her boun- 
tiful table, in distant imitation of the Harvard 
Annex. Of course Harvard will, by and by, do a 
great deal more for them than she has done yet, 
and Madam Boylston, who alone of her sex has 
held her solitary place on these walls for nearly 
a century, among these shades of learned men, 
looks down upon me with smiling approval when 
I say that somehow or other, sooner or later, Har- 
vard will yet give the women a better chance for 

116 



HARVARD COMMENCEMENT 

education, as Cambridge and Oxford have al- 
ready done. 

No enumeration, Mr. President, of the glories 
of Harvard would be quite complete which 
omitted to refer to the athletic development of 
these later days. Voltaire wrote to Helvetius— 
' ' The body of an athlete and the soul of a sage are 
what we require to be happy.' ' How prophetic 
of to-day's curriculum at Harvard. To-morrow 
at New London will put our muscle and our met- 
tle to the test. Let us pray for the pluck and 
the wind and the bottom of the Harvard crew. 

I must not prolong these pleasing bits of elo- 
quence, or else His Excellency will begin to sus- 
pect that we sons of Harvard think a little too 
much of ourselves. Nothing, nothing could be 
farther from the truth than that. Yet I need not 
assure him, because he knows it already, that it 
is our true boast that an overweening modesty is 
the leading Harvard attribute. But let me, before 
closing, refer to one or two special incidents of the 
day. It is now 245 years since John Harvard 
died in Charlestown, bequeathing his fair name, 
his library and the half of his estate to the infant 
college in the wilderness, then just struggling into 
existence and matriculating its first freshman 
class of nine. He surely moulded better than he 
knew; he died all unconscious of the immortality 
of glory that awaited him, for it was not till after 
his death that the General Court voted, in recog- 
nition of his generous gifts, to change the name of 
the little college at Newtown to Harvard College. 

117 



HARVARD COMMENCEMENT 

And now, after eight generations of graduates 
have been baptized in his name, a pions wor- 
shipper at his shrine, turning his face towards 
Mecca, has presented to the alumni a bronze 
statue of our prophetic founder, which is to be 
erected at the head of the Delta, and to stand for 
coming ages as the guardian genius of the col- 
lege. Let me read the letter which precedes the 
gift ; and I will say that the writer and the giver, 
a gentleman here present, from whom and of 
whom I hope we shall hear more by and by, is Mr. 
Samuel J. Bridge, of Boston. The letter is as fol- 
lows: 

To the President and Fellows of Harvard College: 
Gentlemen — I have had the pleasure of offering yon 
an ideal statue in "bronze, representing your founder, 
the Rev. John Harvard, to be designed by Daniel C. 
French, of Concord, and to be placed in the west end of 
the enclosure, in which Memorial Hall stands. If you 
do me the honor to accept this offer, I propose to con- 
tract at once for the work, including an appropriate 
pedestal, and I am assured that the statue can be in 
place by June 1, 1884. I am, with much respect, 

Samuel J. Bridge. 

I am sure, gentlemen, that I can assure the gen- 
erous donor in your name of the hearty thanks of 
all the alumni of the college, those who are here 
to-day and those who are scattered throughout the 
country and the world. 

Other generous gifts commemorate this occa- 
sion — a marble bust of General William F. Bart- 

118 



HARVAED COMMENCEMENT 

lett, of the class of 1862— a hero if God ever made 
one, a martyr, who was fourteen years dying for 
his country of wounds that he bore for her— is 
placed in this hall to-day to stay as long as mar- 
ble shall endure, in the fit company of heroes and 
martyrs to whom its walls are dedicated. Colonel 
Henry Lee, by and by, will formally present it 
to you, and also a bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
sacred forever within these walls. Surely, if Har- 
vard had never produced anything but Emerson, 
she would have been entitled to a front rank 
among the great universities. 

But, brethren, I know you are all impatient 
to hear those you have come to hear. You can- 
not wait any longer, I am sure, to hear from our 
excellent president his annual message of com- 
fort and distress. He will tell you all that the col- 
lege in the last year has done for you, and all that 
you in return, in the years to come, are expected 
to do for the college. It will also be your privil- 
ege to hear from the people of Massachusetts, as 
represented in the person of His Excellency the 
Governor, who has come here to-day by the in- 
vitation of the president and fellows, which he 
accepted in deference to an ancient custom not 
easily to be broken. You all remember, gentle- 
men, that intimate and honorable alliance that has 
existed between the college and the State for now 
nearly two centuries, out of tender regard for 
which, tradition assures us that every Commence- 
ment, beginning with that of 1642, has been graced 
by the presence of the governor of the Common- 

119 



HARVARD COMMENCEMENT 

wealth. And, for one, I hope the day may be far, 
very far, distant when the governor of Massachu- 
setts shall fail to be welcomed on Commencement 
day within the walls of Harvard. In the name of 
Massachusetts, we greet him, remembering, as we 
may fitly remember, in this place sacred to heroic 
deeds, that it was he who, at the call of Andrew, 
led the advanced guard of Massachusetts, in 
which certain sons of Harvard were a part, to 
the rescue and the relief of the besieged capital; 
that Lincoln set his seal upon that service by com- 
missioning their commander, as a major general 
of the United States, and that it did not need that 
diploma to prove that he bore and they followed 
to the front the ancient standard of Massachu- 
setts, in the spirit of Sidney's motto, which the 
State has made its own — ense petit placidam, sub 
libertate quietem. 



120 



HAEVAED COMMENCEMENT 

1885 



HARVARD COMMENCEMENT 

1885 

Address delivered at Cambridge to the Alumni of Harvard, June 
24, 1885, on the occasion of Mr. Lowell's return from Eng- 
land. 

NOW that you have banqueted upon these more 
substantial dainties, which the Delmonico 
of Harvard has provided, I invite you to partake 
of the more delicate diet of tongues and sounds — 
the favorite dish at every Harvard dinner — where, 
of course, every alumnus expects to get his desert. 
We have assembled for the two hundred and 
forty-ninth time to pay our vows at the shrine of 
our alma mater, to revel in the delights of mutual 
admiration, and to welcome to the commencement 
of actual life one hundred and seventy-five new 
brethren that our mother has brought forth to- 
day. Gentlemen, it is your great misfortune, and 
not a little to my embarrassment, that I have been 
called upon on two occasions to stand here in the 
place of the president of your choice, and to fill 
the shoes of a better man, and if I shuffle awk- 
wardly about in them, you will remember that they 
are several sizes too large for me, and with higher 
heels than I am accustomed to wear. On a for- 
mer occasion, in view of the incompatibility of 

123 



HAEVAED COMMENCEMENT 

sentiment among high authorities, I did what I 
might to stem the tide of a seemingly irrepressible 
conflict, and, by your counsel and aid, with appa- 
rent success. " Grim visaged war V did smooth 
" his wrinkled front/ ' and peace and harmony 
prevailed where blood had threatened. 

But how, gentlemen, can I hope to fill your ex- 
pectations to-day, when you have justly counted 
upon the most popular of all your divines and the 
most fervent of all your orators, who should now 
be leading your counsels here? But Phillips 
Brooks, having long ago mastered all hearts at 
home, has gone abroad in search of new conquests. 
When last heard from he was doing well in very 
kindred company; for he was breakfasting with 
Gladstone, the statesman whose defeat is as 
mighty as victory, the scholar and the orator, 
who would exchange for no title in the royal gift, 
the lustre of his own great name. But I have no 
fears for the success of this occasion, notwith- 
standing the absence that we deplore, when I look 
around these tables and see who still are here. 

In the first place, you are all here, and when 
the sons of Harvard are all together, basking in 
the sunshine of each other's countenances, what 
need is there for the sun to shine 1 

And then, President Eliot is here. I remember 
that, sixteen years ago, we gave him his first wel- 
come to the seat which had previously been occu- 
pied by Quincy, Everett, Sparks, Felton and 
Walker, and to-day, in your names, I may thank 
him that he has more than redeemed the pride and 

124 



HARVAED COMMENCEMENT 

promise of his earlier days. While it cannot ex- 
actly be said that he found Harvard of brick and 
left it marble, it can truly be said that he found 
it a college and has already made it a university, 
and let us all hope that his faithful reign over 
us may continue as long as he has the strength 
and the courage to carry on the good work that 
he has in hand. 

And then, the Governor of the Commonwealth 
is here, always a most honored guest among the 
alumni of Harvard. Governor Winthrop attended 
our first commencement, and I believe that all 
the Governors in unbroken succession have fol- 
lowed his example. 

To-day, too, we are honored with the presence 
of the Vice-President of the United States, and 
now that Harvard has assumed national propor- 
tions, what can be more fitting than that we 
should welcome to our board one of the chief 
representatives of the national government! He 
comes to us fresh from Yale, and if we may be- 
lieve the morning papers — a very large if, I ad- 
mit — if we may believe those veracious journals, 
the eminent Vice-President yesterday at New Ha- 
ven gave utterance to two brief and pithy senti- 
ments, one of which we shall accept with abso- 
lute, unqualified applause, and the other of which 
we must receive, if at all, with a modification. 
" Yale," said he, in short and sententious words, 
which are the essence of great men, and which we 
are all so fond of hearing and reporting, ' ' Yale, ' ' 
said he, " is everywhere." Gentlemen, I would 

125 



HARVARD COMMENCEMENT 

say with this modification, " Yes, Yale is every- 
where, but she always finds Harvard there before 
her." Gentlemen, the rudeness of your manner 
broke off my sentence — " She always finds Har- 
vard there before her, or close alongside or very 
closely in her rear; and let us hope that her 
boys at New London to-morrow will demonstrate 
the truth of that. ,, The other sentiment that 
he uttered, and that which needs no qualifica- 
tion, is that public office is a public trust. Gen- 
tlemen, in saying that, he stole Harvard thunder. 
That has been her doctrine since the days of John 
Adams ; and I am sure that you must be perfectly 
delighted to hear from this eminent man that old 
doctrine of ours reinforced. 

But, gentlemen, better than all the rest, once 
more at home in his old place among us again is 
James Eussell Lowell. Eight years ago he left 
us for the public service. Men who did not know 
him wondered how poetry and diplomacy would 
work together, poetry, the science of all truth, 
and diplomacy, that is sometimes thought to be 
not quite so true. Well, if you will allow me, I 
will explain his triumphs abroad by a wise saying 
of Goethe's, the fitness of which, I think, you will^ 
recognize. " Poetry/ ' said he, " belongs not to 
the noble nor to the people, neither to the king nor 
to the peasant ; it is the offspring of a true man. ' ' 
It is not because of the laurels that were heaped 
upon him abroad, not because he commanded new 
honor for the American scholar and the American 
people, and not because his name will henceforth 

126 



HARVAED COMMENCEMENT 

be a new bond of union between the two countries ; 
but we learned to love him before he went away, 
because we knew that from the beginning he had 
been the fearless champion of truth and of free- 
dom, and during every year of his absence, we 
have loved him the more. So, in your names, I 
bid him a cordial welcome home again. 

You will also be pleased to hear that Dr. Holmes 
has been inspired by this interesting feature of 
the occasion to mount his Pegasus once more and 
ride out to Cambridge upon his back; and soon 
you will hear him strike his lyre again in praise 
of his younger brother. But these are not all the 
treasures that are in store for you. Dr. James 
Freeman Clarke, after twenty-five years of con- 
tinuous service on the Board of Overseers, from 
which he now retires by the edict of the Consti- 
tution, will tell you frankly what he thinks about 
you and about them. And then, to the Class of 
1835, on the fiftieth year of its graduation, the 
crowning honors of this day belong, and I am 
pleased to say that their chosen spokesman, al- 
though pretending to be for the moment an inva- 
lid — he wrote to me that he was no better than he 
should be — he is here to speak for them. For us 
who have been coming up to Cambridge for the 
last thirty years, I would like to know what Har- 
vard commencement without Judge Hoar would 
be. Who can forget the quips and cranks and 
wanton wiles with which he has beguiled many an 
hour that promised to be dull ; and how he has, I 
will not say sobered, but dimmed some of our 

127 



HAEVAED COMMENCEMENT 

lighter moments by words of wisdom and power. 
So, in your name I say : ' i Long life and a green 
old age to Judge Hoar, and all the members of 
the class of 1835." 

Then, gentlemen, all these new doctors of law — 
why, Harvard, returning to an ancient custom, 
has been selecting them from her own sons, and 
to-day it may truly be said that the University 
has been growing rich and strong by degrees. 
You will be glad to hear all of them speak for 
themselves. Of one of them, Dr. Carter, I will 
say from intimate knowledge, that he leads us 
gallantly at the bar of New York, and all his 
associates rejoice in his leadership. He has re- 
cently rendered a signal service to the jurispru- 
dence of that great State by contributing more 
than any other man to the defeat of a code which 
threatened to involve all -the settled law of that 
community in confusion and contempt. 

And now, as I have told you who are to speak 
to you, I should sit down. I believe, however, it is 
usual for the presiding officer to recall any star- 
tling events in the history of the college. Gentle- 
men, there have been none. The petition of the 
undergraduates for what they call a fuller civil 
and religious liberty, in being relieved from com- 
pulsory attendance on morning prayers, was de- 
nied. The answer of the overseers was well con- 
ceived — that, in obedience to the settled rules and 
regulations of the college, of which that was one, 
they would find an all-sufficient liberty. That 
idea was not original with them ; they borrowed it 

128 



HAEVAED COMMENCEMENT 

from Mr. Lowell, when he said and sung in his 
sonnet upon the reformers — 

Who yet have not the one great lesson learned 

That grows in leaves, 

Tides in the mighty seas, 
And in the stars eternally hath burned, 

That only full obedience is free. 

The only other incident in the history of the 
year is the successful effort that has been made 
in searching out the history of John Harvard, and 
about that the president of the college will tell 
you in good time, who he was, whence he came, 
and where he got the fortune and the library 
which he contributed along with his melodious 
name to the college. He gave half of all he had, 
gentlemen, and out of that modest fountain what 
vast results have flowed. May no red-handed 
vandal of an undergraduate ever desecrate his 
statue that stands at the head of the Delta. 

And now, brethren, would you have your statue 
crowned? Would you, too, become immortal 1 ? 
Would you identify your names with the glory of 
the college? The way is open and easy. Follow 
exactly the example of the founder. Give one 
equal half of all you are worth to the college, and 
if you wish to enjoy your own immortality, do it 
to-morrow while you are yet alive. If you shrink 
from that, die at once and give it to them now. 
Other people possibly will rise up and call you 
blessed, whatever your own may do ; so you will 

129 



HAEVARD COMMENCEMENT 

relieve the president of more than half the labors 
of his office. 

I did want to say a word about another matter 
— the elective system — but President Eliot tells 
me I had better not. He says that the Board of 
Overseers of the college are incubating on that 
question, and that there is no telling what they 
may hatch out. Now, don't let us disturb them, 
gentlemen, at any rate, while they are on the nest. 
We might crack the shell, and then the whole work 
would have to be done over again. But, as you 
now seem to be in good mood, let me say one sin- 
gle word about this elective system. I don't 
care how they settle it. I hope they will give us 
the means of sustaining and fortifying their de- 
cision when they make it. We alumni at a dis- 
tance from the college are often stung to indig- 
nation by the attacks that are made upon us by 
the representatives of other colleges. One would 
think, by the way they talk down there at Prince- 
ton that Harvard was going to the everlasting- 
bow-wows; that the fountains of learning were 
being undermined and broken up; that, as Mr. 
Lowell again said: 

The Anglo-Saxondom's idee's breakin' 'em to pieces, 
And thet idee's thet every mon doos jest wut he damn 
pleases. 

I suppose the truth about the elective system 
is that the world moves on and colleges move with 
it. In Cotton Mather's time, when he said that 

130 



HARVAED COMMENCEMENT 

the sole object of the foundation of a college was 
to furnish a good supply of godly ministers for 
the churches, it was well enough to feed them 
on Latin and Greek only. Now that young men 
when they go out into the world have everything 
to do about taking part in all the activities of life, 
for one, I say let them have the chance to learn 
here anything that they can possibly wish to. And 
I hope that our president will persevere in one 
direction at least, until he can say truly that what- 
ever is worth learning can be taught well at Har- 
vard. This is well expressed again in an idea of 
Mr. Lowell 's, who always has ideas enough, if 
divided, to go around even among us : 

New occasions teach new duties; 

Time makes ancient good uncouth; 
They must upward still, and onward, 

Who would keep abreast of truth. 

I hope you will be very patient with all the 
other speakers. I advise them, as the hour is 
late and the afternoon is short and there are a 
great many of them in number, each to put a good 
deal of shortening in his cake, which I have omit- 
ted. That is a rule that never is applied to the 
presiding officer, and I am afraid it never will be. 



131 



PHILLIPS BKOOKS 



PHILLIPS BROOKS 

Address delivered at Music Hall, New York, at a Memorial Ser- 
vice to Phillips Brooks, February 16, 1893. 

MR. CHAIRMAN : This goodly array of hon- 
ored clergymen of all sects, Catholic and 
Protestant, Christian and Hebrew, that have come 
here to-night to speak of the great preacher and 
the good bishop, is itself a noble tribute to his 
memory and his fame. His heart was large 
enough, his religion was broad enough, to embrace 
them all; and they honor themselves as well as 
him by joining hands around his grave, as the 
children and servants of one Father who has made 
of one blood all races of men. 

Standing alone among them as a layman, and 
a Gentile, but as one who, from the time that we 
were college boys together, knew and honored and 
loved him, I may speak for a few moments of him 
personally by the great and dear name of Phillips 
Brooks — a name that he has made grander and 
nobler than any title which the world or the 
Church could bestow ; of the man who was greater 
than the bishop ; of the man whose heart went out 
to all his fellow-men. 

Truly he was born great, and to a greatness 
wholly different from that which some achieve 
by their struggles and their triumphs, and some 

135 



PHILLIPS BROOKS 

have thrust upon them by accident or by chance. 
Nor was his birth and breeding, in Boston, fifty 
years ago, a happy accident. He was not a crea- 
ture of one day or of one generation. All the 
generations, from the landing at Boston down, 
contributed to his grand qualities and his noble 
gifts. His first renowned ancestor, John Cotton, 
who landed in Boston in 1633, had electrified, by 
his eloquence in the churches of England, all the 
faithful disciples there, and when driven out by 
the accession and tyranny of Archbishop Laud, he 
came to America, the common refuge of the op- 
pressed. From that day until his death he led, in 
sacred things, the people of Massachusetts. And 
it is truly wonderful in how many points this last 
glorious descendant of his resembled him of whom 
it is written, that beyond all things he had the 
genius for oratory, particularly for the oratory of 
the pulpit. Of him, too, as of his great descen- 
dant, the story is told, that, so majestic and im- 
pressive was his commanding appearance, that 
sin always stood rebuked in his presence ; so that 
when he visited the tavern in the town of Derby, 
where he ministered in the church, the landlord 
begged him to depart, because he was never able 
to swear when that man was under his roof. And 
when John Cotton died, all New England mourned 
for him. The whole colony turned out as mourn- 
ers, just as to-day the greater colony of States are 
mourning in a common sorrow for his most 
worthy descendant. 

To this great progenitor, through six genera- 
136 



PHILLIPS BEOOKS 

tions of worthy preachers and teachers and mer- 
chants, we trace his pedigree. And the saintly 
women, in many generations, who in the ever-ex- 
panding multiple of his ancestry carried his blood 
back to the foundation of the settlement — they 
gave their virtues to warm and enlarge and en- 
rich his tender and womanly heart. 

All the greatest and best qualities of Puri- 
tanism, purged of its dross, its follies, and its sins, 
were manifested in him. Its tolerance, evolved 
after two centuries of struggle with its own intol- 
erance; its ever-living sense of duty as the guide 
and the object of life; its unfailing and untiring 
industry, recognizing the gospel of hard work as 
next after the Gospels of the evangelists ; its aspi- 
ration always for a higher and a better state ; its 
allegiance under all circumstances to the universal 
brotherhood of man ; its enthusiasm under all cir- 
cumstances for freedom — all these great qualities, 
and all that flowed from them, all these were cen- 
tred in him. So that it might well be said that 
he was the last, the ripest, the best fruit of the 
New England discipline to which the world owes 
so much. 

And then, what marvellous gifts he had! A 
mind of a power such as few men possess; elo- 
quence, wit, magnetism; that wonderful gift of 
persuading and influencing other men. And yet 
the thought never entered his soul of using any 
one of these rich gifts for his own aggrandize- 
ment. He spent them all as freely as he received 
them, in the service of his fellow-men. He never 

137 



PHILLIPS BEOOKS 

drew one selfish breath or spent a self-indulgent 
hour. When the report came, the day after his 
death, that he had left a considerable fortune, it 
seemed like an aspersion upon his character. We 
knew that it could not be so. And when the re- 
port was corrected and the truth came to be 
known, it turned out that he had gone out of the 
world as poor as he came into it, and that he had 
spent all and followed his Master. 

Well do I remember, as if it were but yesterday, 
when my eyes first rested upon him, as he en- 
tered the chapel at Harvard College, in the fresh- 
man class, forty-four years ago — a tall and slen- 
der stripling, towering above all his companions, 
with that magnificent head, that majestic face, 
already grave and serious, but with those great 
brown eyes lighting it, beaming with brotherly 
love and tenderness. And from that hour to this 
he has been the boast, the delight, the glory of the 
college: and when I hear, as sometimes from 
thoughtless and ignorant lips I do hear, asper- 
sions upon the good fame of Harvard, my answer 
always is, " Phillips Brooks. By their fruits ye 
shall know them." 

And now let me cast one flower of love upon 
his still fresh grave. To the young men of Massa- 
chusetts, of New England, of America, he has 
been a living and a saving grace for two entire 
generations. As a boy, he showed them the ex- 
ample of an absolutely blameless life and con- 
duct, and of utterly unsullied purity. As a man, 
he has been their guide, their counsellor, and their 

138 



PHILLIPS BEOOKS 

friend. Ah, how well he understood their condi- 
tion, their exposure, their frailties, their tempta- 
tions, their lofty aspirations, and their infinite 
possibilities! By no barren precepts, by no sol- 
emn exhortations, but always with the sympathy 
of that warm and brotherly heart that was beat- 
ing and palpitating for them in his breast, how 
easily he won their confidence, how completely he 
commanded their obedience, how nobly he led 
them always up to wiser and better things ! 

To give you one familiar and well-known illus- 
tration of how, by one gentle word, by one sym- 
pathetic thought, he could melt and subdue and 
rally them — the story is told that, when he was 
a college preacher, a group of his young friends, 
after a night of folly and debauchery, were found 
huddling together over the remains of an expiring 
fire, unfit for duty, hollow with shame for them- 
selves and one another ; and the great and good 
doctor came to make them a morning call. Not 
one word of rebuke, not one breath of censure, 
but a kindly morning greeting, a few minutes of 
pleasant chat, and then, as he rose to go, he laid 
his hand upon the head of the leader and said, as 
he left them, " Well, boys, it doesn't make you 
feel any better, does it? " That gentle treatment 
reached them, and they arose and followed him. 

Well may the mothers of America — yes, and 
the fathers of America, too — weep for Phillips 
Brooks, when they think of their boys. For 
where, where will they find such another guide, 
such another refuge, such another friend? 

139 



THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 



THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 

Address delivered at the club's Centennial, November 24, 1895. 

BRETHKEN.=We have come together to 
celebrate the foundation of the Hasty Pud- 
ding Club, a signal event in the history of Har- 
vard-, for it has certainly done a vast deal to 
mitigate the austerities of college life, and to 
alleviate its "most distressing occurrences" — per- 
haps as much as all its other institutions com- 
bined. 

We call it our centennial, but the mists of tradi- 
tion have thrown a halo of uncertainty about the 
origin of the club which probably can never be 
quite cleared up. If we can recall the words of 
Theodore Lyman's Pudding Song (and you will 
permit me to adopt it as part of my address 
to-night), its first conception was in the good Old 
Colony days soon after the landing of the Pil- 
grims on Plymouth Rock, and Miles Standish 
himself took part in its foundation in company 
with a famous Indian warrior. Some words in the 
song are a little archaic, but you will like it none 
the less for that. 

This song had a great currency in the club in 
the old days, although it seems since to have fal- 
len into " innocuous desuetude,' ' but I am sure 
that it will set the keynote for this august occa- 

143 



THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 

sion, if we all join in singing it under the lead of 
Lyman's classmate, Eeed, who knows its history 
well. 

Long since, when our forefathers landed 

On barren rock bleak and forlorn 
They left their little boat stranded, 

To search through the wild woods for corn. 
Soon some hillocks of earth met their gaze, 

Like altars of mystical spell; 
But within finding Indian maize, 

Amazement on all of them fell. 

Quoth Standish : * ' Right hard have we toiled, 

A dinner well have before long; 
A pudding shall quickly be boiled 

By help of the Lord and the corn. ,, 
At that moment the warwhoop resounded 

O'er mountain and valley and glen, 
And a Choctaw chief savagely bounded 

To slaughter those corn-stealing men. 

"Ha! vile Pagan! " the Captain quoth he. 

" 'Tis true that we've taken a horn, 
But though corned we all of us be, 

We ne'er will acknowledge the corn. ,, 
Then, a wooden spoon held in his hand, 

He seized his red foe by the nose, 
And with pudding his belly he crammed 

In spite of his struggles and throes. 

The victor triumphantly grasped 

The hair of his foe closely shorn, 
While the savage he struggled and gasped, 

O'erppwered by heat and by corn. 
144 



THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 

1 * Be converted ! ' ' the good Standish said, 

" Or surely by fire you'll die, 
Though on boiled thus far you have fed, 

We quickly will give you a fry." 

Then straight was the savage baptized 

In pudding all smoking and warm, 
While the Parson he him catechized 

Concerning the cooking of corn. 
Then the Puritans chanted a psalm 

With a chorus of, " Hey — rub-a-dub," 
And amid gentle music's soft charm 

They founded the great Pudding Club. 

And now that in this delightful harmony we 
have all mellowed together, from Dr. Wyman of 
the class of 1833, whom we joyfully greet here to- 
night as the patriarch of us all, to the latest 
neophyte of 1897, we can take our stand on the 
solid groundwork of history and locate the actual 
organization of the club in 1795 by Horace Bin- 
ney, of Philadelphia, and Judge White, of Salem, 
who shared with him the first honors of the class 
of 1797, and Dr. John Collins Warren of the same 
class, all three of whom afterwards became very 
eminent citizens of the United States. These men 
certainly in their youth thus rendered a great ser- 
vice to the college for their own day, and for all 
coming time, by the promotion of sociability and 
by advancing good fellowship among the members 
of the club. From that day to this the club has 
been true to its original motto of " Concordia dis- 
cors " and has well maintained the standard of 

145 



THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 

innocent and reasonable recreation amid the seri- 
ous duties of life. The only wonder is that the 
students of a college in which the curriculum in- 
cluded Horace had not learned long before how 
" dulce est desipere in loco." That is exactly 
what we have been doing in the last hundred 
years, and we mean to go on doing it forever. 

Now, brethren, a word of explanation. When 
I came here this evening I found that no arrange- 
ment had been made as to who should sit at the 
central table, and I took the liberty of inviting 
these venerable men who sit around me, following 
the old rule of the college that the members 
should enter the banquet hall and take rank ac- 
cording to the years of their respective classes, 
much as Lowell laid down in his essay, that 
those should have the best chance to eat the din- 
ner who had the poorest teeth to eat it with, and 
the poorest ears to hear the speeches. 

My first duty is to tell you how deeply sensible 
I am of the honor that you have conferred upon 
me in asking me to preside over your delibera- 
tions this evening. It is an honor that can come 
only once in a hundred years. It came in a most 
opportune time for me, as testifying to the respect 
that the rising generation entertain for those of 
us who are passing beyond them in the march of 
years, for I had just read in a New York news- 
paper that some of the younger legal lights had 
spoken of Mr. Carter and Mr. Choate as " moss- 
grown old fogies " who must soon yield their 
places to the younger members of the bar. 

146 



THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 

It is not the first time that I have had a diffi- 
cult honor thrust upon me by the Pudding. In 
1851 1 was classed among its lyric poets, and then, 
like Horace, I struck the stars with my head sub- 
lime. But the stars were not damaged. I had a 
big head for a few days or more, but nothing 
came of it. That was my first and last poetic 
utterance. 

Doubtless the grim discipline of the Puritans 
held on too long at Harvard. But even in the 
grimmest of Puritan days we might have bor- 
rowed the chaste language of Milton, who in- 
vented the most excellent motto for the cardinal 
principle of the club: 

" Mirth, admit me of thy crew, 
To live with her and live with thee, 
In unreproved pleasures free." 

Or what will you say to the words of our own 
American bard, Joel Barlow, who, as tradition 
tells us, first suggested the rich inspiration of 
Hasty Pudding: 

" I sing the joys I know, the charms I feel, 
My morning incense and my evening meal; 
The sweets of hasty pudding. 

Come, dear bowl, glide o'er my palate, and inspire 
my soul." 

Never was there an association of men who 
had so good a right to celebrate their centennial 
as this club. A century looks down into the pot 

147 



THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 

and finds it bubbling and singing and gurgling 
with the same jovial note that it had when Hor- 
ace Binney ladled it out to feed the men of 1795. 

It was not their hungry palates, but their hun- 
gry souls that were aspiring for food. How busy 
our College had been in the process of gestation 
before the time we celebrate to-night in breeding 
heroes for the State in the coming days that were 
to try men 's souls ! You all remember how Har- 
vard suffered, when those deadly days of peril 
came. There were men present at the foundation 
of the Club whose fathers had seen the college 
buildings converted into barracks for the colonial 
soldiers. There were buxom matrons, who, as 
maidens, had seen the handsome Virginia General 
flourish his sword under the shadow of the old 
elm as he took command of the New England 
troops, or, as Lowell put it, always putting the 
right word in the right place, " he had come to 
wield our homespun Saxon chivalry. ' ' 

But better days had come. Those days of want 
and famine and pestilence had passed away. Those 
trying days of hardship after the war, almost 
as perilous as the war itself, had been struggled 
through. Washington was president, and Jay's 
treaty, which caused so much strife and commo- 
tion, had just been ratified by the Senate. It was 
a time of far brighter days; it was the dawn of 
a new era for America, the time of a new depar- 
ture. 

I am always accused, at Harvard dinners in 
New York, of speaking by the catalogue. Well, let 

148 



THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 

the names upon the Pudding catalogue of this 
century tell their own story; let us see if, by the 
mingling of play with work, anybody has suffered. 
Let us see whether, by making out of duty itself 
the merriest play, we have failed in any instance. 
What say you to this? Did Channing and 
Buckminster and James Walker and Phillips 
Brooks, lead their followers into the verdant pas- 
tures with less of divinity itself, because they 
had disported themselves in former years in the 
club? 

Did our historians, Bancroft and Prescott 
and the recently lamented Parkman contrib- 
ute any less delightful lessons to their country- 
men, because they had gathered around the crack- 
ling fire of the Pudding? Did our orators, 
such men as Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner and 
Bobert C. Winthrop, speak with less inspiration 
because, in their boyhood days, they had indulged 
in the ribald laugh and tried their first eloquence 
before their brethren of the Pudding? Were the 
lips of our two great poets, Holmes and Lowell, 
touched with less divine a fire because they had 
lisped their first numbers to their brethren of the 
club, in whose records they stand imperishably re- 
corded? 

Now I am not inclined to claim for the Hasty 
Pudding Club all the success that has come to 
Harvard College. But when I see its history out- 
lined as we have to-night, when we see the cream 
of the college in successive generations enrolled 
in its ranks, and participating in all great deeds, 

149 



THE HASTY PUDDING CLUB 

all great services, all great triumphs for the pub- 
lic good, it behooves us to keep this club pure and 
sweet and good as it always has been, and one 
of the great influences for education and truth 
and good morals at Harvard for all time. 



150 



EAEL GREY AND FRANKLIN'S PORTRAIT 



EARL GREY AND FRANKLIN'S 
PORTRAIT 

Address delivered at the dinner of the Pilgrims of the United 

States to Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada, New 

York, March 31, 1906. 

THE pleasant duty has been assigned to me to 
propose the health of Sari Grey, Governor- 
General of the Dominion of Canada. 

I regard it as a great privilege to be able to 
perform this service and a very great honor is 
conferred npon The Pilgrims by the presence of 
our distinguished guest. We welcome him not 
only on personal but on public grounds, and on 
both we give him the heartiest greetings. 

Lord Grey is no stranger in the United States. 
Long before he was called to the exalted office 
which he now fills, he had been a frequent visitor 
among us. He had made the acquaintance of 
many of us in divers parts of the land, and as 
wherever he goes he is sure to make friends, he 
had found that he left behind him on his last voy- 
age home, before he became Governor-General of 
Canada, a host of admiring friends. And then we 
welcome him, on public grounds, because he is the 
personal representative of his august sovereign 
the King of England, who ever since he came 
among us as a youth in 1859 or 1860 has been the 

153 



EAEL GEEY AND FRANKLIN'S PORTRAIT 

constant and steadfast friend of the United 
States. Since his accession to the throne he has 
lost no opportunity to manifest his good-will to 
our country, its government and its people. So 
that if we failed to welcome his personal repre- 
sentative with all the honors, we should indeed be 
guilty of great neglect and ingratitude. 

And then he comes before us as the represen- 
tative of a great nation— the Dominion of Can- 
ada, our nearest neighbor, whose boundaries 
march with ours for thirty-five hundred miles 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

In the presence of the Secretary of State I speak 
with bated breath. But as I no longer live under 
his instructions or by his will, I can, for the first 
time in many years, enjoy the great privilege of 
being without a master and. of saying what I 
think and what I feel. And I do feel that this 
great Dominion of Canada is a nation with which 
we ought not only to be at perpetual peace, but that 
all possible questions remaining unadjusted be- 
tween us should be setttled as soon as possible. She 
is not only our nearest neighbor, but our most spir- 
ited and ambitious rival, and her prosperity is ad- 
vancing with leaps and bounds quite as vigorous 
as our own. It was well said by her distinguished 
Prime Minister in the eloquent fervor of the last 
campaign in Canada, that while by the conces- 
sion of all mankind the nineteenth century be- 
longed to the United States, the twentieth century 
so far belonged to Canada. And she is certainly 
showing it. The development of her vast re- 

154 



EAEL GREY AND FRANKLIN'S PORTRAIT 

sources of every possible description, the opening 
of her wonderful agricultural lands— so rich, they 
say up there, that if you scatter grains of wheat 
in the morning a whole harvest is ready for gath- 
ering before night; all this is attracting thou- 
sands and tens of thousands of our own fellow citi- 
zens over the border in exchange for those whom 
our counter attractions draw away from her. I 
do not say which way the balance lies; I shall 
leave that for Lord Grey to determine, as no 
doubt he can. 

But we have a neighbor there to reckon with, 
such as we never thought long years before the 
twentieth century began. She is likely to become 
very soon not only a formidable but very success- 
ful competitor, and if she goes on as she has been 
proceeding for the last five or ten years, we shall 
soon find her able to feed the mother country 
without any help from us, and we shall have to 
find new markets for our surplus products. One 
civilization, one law, one hope, one aspiration per- 
vades the people of both countries, and they are 
so much alike that on my recent visit to Canada 
I found that when you crossed the border, you 
could only tell by the change of flag under which 
jurisdiction you still were. 

I referred to the hope I entertain that, for the 
purpose of maintaining and making absolutely 
sure for all the future peace and harmony be- 
tween us, every unsettled question should be 
brought to an early determination. 

Nobody knows, nobody can ever tell how soon 
155 



EAEL GREY AND FRANKLIN'S PORTRAIT 

an international question of trifling importance 
may become of serious consequence. It was my 
recent privilege, on a visit to Lord Grey at Otta- 
wa, to come into personal contact not only with 
the distinguished Premier, that great orator and 
statesman, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, but also with 
most of the other members of his government; 
and I found, so far as I could judge from con- 
stant and repeated conversations, a tone not only 
of sympathy and of friendship, but of a great de- 
sire on their part that all questions that lie be- 
tween us should be forever removed. I believe 
they all can be. I don't know that you can ever 
settle the fisheries question as long as fish swim, 
so that some new form of question as to bait or 
sinker may not afterwards arise. But with that 
exception I believe it is possible to place the re- 
lation of these two great rival friendly nations 
on a basis that will secure harmony without any 
fear of interruption for all the future. And it is 
on that ground that I particularly welcome the 
presence here of the distinguished Chief Magis- 
trate, the Governor-General of Canada. 

Lord Grey's ancestors, several of them, have 
been persons of great interest to the American 
people. When the second earl, his grandfather, 
achieved that wonderful performance in states- 
manship of carrying the Reform Bill in '32, 
sweeping away the whole system of rotten bor- 
oughs that had existed from the days of the Plan- 
tagenets and the Tudors, and substituted in its 
place a more reasonable and equitable distribu- 

156 



EARL GREY AND FRANKLIN'S PORTRAIT 

tion between the different parts of the kingdom, 
he accomplished a work that, while it regener- 
ated England, appealed directly and immediately 
to the sympathy and to the admiration of the 
American People. 

But it is to a more remote ancestor of his that 
I wish particularly to call yonr attention to-night, 
I mean his great grandfather Major-General Sir 
Charles Grey, who was raised to the peerage and 
became the first Earl Grey; because his experi- 
ence in America furnishes us with an incident 
which I believe will be the chief feature of this 
notable occasion, and will give complete pleasure 
and satisfaction not only to you but to all the 
American people. 

When the British forces were in possession of 
Philadelphia in that dismal winter of 1777, this 
celebrated ancestor of Lord Grey, second in com- 
mand under Lord Howe, or Sir Henry Clinton, I 
forget which it was, was in occupation of the 
City, and he and his Aide-de-Camp, Captain John 
Andre, were, I believe, in the actual possession of 
Franklin's house on Market street, in that city. 
They had for a while a very good time there, and 
in the dining-room, where they carried on their 
revels, there was a fine portrait of Benjamin 
Franklin himself, which he and his family re- 
garded as one of the best that had been painted. 
Well, after a few months they had to leave Phila- 
delphia a little more suddenly than they had en- 
tered it, what loose-tongued soldiers call "skee- 
daddling " they had to execute in a hurry; and 

157 



EAEL GREY AND FRANKLIN'S PORTRAIT 

somehow or other in the confusion of their depart- 
ure this fine portrait of Franklin disappeared 
from the walls of his dining-room, and was packed 
up with other miscellaneous baggage and was 
seen no more in Philadelphia. 

Franklin could stand it very well, for he was 
over in Paris achieving that wonderful perform- 
ance of his which secured the independence of 
America, in the form of the Treaty of Alliance 
with France. I suppose, that as they could not 
get hold of him, they regarded it as a very suit- 
able mode of capture to make a prisoner of his 
portrait to show to their friends at home. Well, 
how it got to England exactly nobody can tell, it 
is so many years and ages ago. Richard Bache 
says, in a letter to Franklin, "Captain John 
Andre took excellent care of the house and every- 
thing in it, but when he went away he took your 
portrait that hangs in the dining-room. ' ' I sup- 
pose that Andre before his death gave it to Gen- 
eral Grey. And since that time, for one hundred 
and thirty years, it has hung upon the walls of 
Lord Grey's ancestral mansion in Northumber- 
land and has been as an heirloom, a cherished 
treasure, generation after generation in his fam- 
ily. And now Lord Grey, in full sympathy with 
that universal enthusiasm for the memory of 
Franklin which has animated all the world in 
commemoration of the two hundredth anniver- 
sary of his birth, in full recognition of the happy 
feeling that prevails now and ought always to 
prevail between the two peoples, and with the 

158 



EAEL GREY AND FRANKLIN'S PORTRAIT 

purpose of doing all that lie possibly can do to 
promote and advance the harmony of the Eng- 
lish-speaking world as represented by these two 
nations, has concluded to restore to the United 
States as a free-will offering this portrait that 
has hung for so long upon his ancestral walls. 
About a month ago he wrote a letter to the 
President of the United States making formal 
presentation of this portrait, and it is now on its 
way to its original home, passing through the 
hands of our American Ambassador in London; 
and I hope that it will arrive in time to take part 
— as Franklin himself cannot except in spirit — in 
that great celebration of Franklin's 200th birth- 
day in Philadelphia, that is to come off on the 
20th of April. 

Gentlemen, I envy Lord Grey this rare oppor- 
tunity to perform such a signal act of grace and 
lofty purpose. I am sure that it will command 
the approval of his own people and will secure 
to our guest of this evening the lasting admira- 
tion and affection of all the people of the United 
States. 



159 



DR. STOKES'S JUBILEE 



DR. STORRS'S JUBILEE 

Address delivered at Dr. Storrs's Jubilee, Brooklyn, November 25, 

1896. 



TO a man who has never lived in Brooklyn, 
but at this moment wishes he always had, 
this night and this assemblage are a startling 
revelation. A whole city gathering for the sole 
purpose of doing honor to its foremost citizen, to 
recognize, to reward and applaud him. You may 
search the annals of American cities in vain for 
such a spectacle. You must go back to Athens, 
Venice or Florence, in their palmiest days, to 
find such an exhibition of civic spirit or of civic 
pride as Brooklyn shows to-night. I deem it a 
very great honor to have been invited here to- 
night to sum up for the people the case of Dr. 
Storrs. To be recognized as his life long lover, 
admirer and follower is a great compliment, and 
greater still to be a spokesman for this assembly, 
for I am absolutely certain that all that is just 
and honest and true, all that is pure and lovely 
and of good report in Brooklyn, if there be any 
virtue, if there be any praise, it is all represented 
and centered here to-night in honor of him. At the 
same time I do not wonder that after the ten days ' 
exhausting services to which Brooklyn has de- 
voted itself, you have had to send across the river 

163 



DR. STORES 'S JUBILEE 

for a fresh supply. It is not for me to say that 
the Brooklyn supply of eulogy is not inexhausti- 
ble, or that Dr. Storrs has yet received all that he 
can stand, but I come as a New Yorker and an 
American to say that Brooklyn, great as she is, is 
not great enough to contain him; that the waters 
of the East river are not swift enough or deep 
enough to cut us off from our share in his fame, 
in his character and in his work; that they be- 
long to all America and are a part of the solid 
gold in her territory which can never be reduced. 
My neighbor, Seth Low, has said that New 
York tried to* get Dr. Storrs and failed. Well, 
that may have been so, but our motto in 
New York is, if at first you don't succeed, try 
again, and New York has got him at last in spite 
of himself. I do not know that in his presence I 
ought to venture to say anything about Greater 
New York, but I do not see him now, and so will 
take courage and say what I was going to say; 
that we are all one city in name and shall be one 
in fact as soon as Mr. DeWitt and Mr. Low have 
mastered the terrible problems that are racking 
their brains. Minerva sprang full panoplied from 
the brain of Jove, and it is said that even Jove 
himself, and one would hardly wonder at it, had 
a terrible headache, yet Greater New York is ex- 
pected to spring, perfect as Venice in her prime, 
from the brains of Messrs. DeWitt, Low and 
Gleason and their companions. 

I am glad that Mr. Low came here and deliv- 
ered himself so well to-night, because you can 

164 



DR. STOBRS'S JUBILEE 

all realize, after lie has accomplished that great 
work, how empty his head will be. It seems to 
be a rule to quote Dr. Storrs to-night. I want to 
quote a saying of his, if I rightly recollect it, in 
his admirable address upon the opening of the 
bridge. He said that "the isolation of New York 
would soon be absorbed and lost in the growing 
community of Brooklyn." Well, that seems to 
be coming to pass now, and our only consolation 
across the river for it is, that at any rate we shall 
be sure of him as a fellow citizen. The scientists 
tell us that no physical force is ever wasted, or 
lost or ended. We whisper into the telephone, 
and the vibration, even though it be less than one 
one-hundred thousandth part of an inch, affects a 
diaphragm one thousand miles away and our ex- 
act voice, just as it is uttered here in Brooklyn, 
exact in tone, loudness, pitch and quality is heard 
by the listening ear in Chicago and St. Louis. 
So they tell us (these things are very hard to be- 
lieve) — that the light from the furthest fixed star 
has been traveling steadily undiminished for 
more than one hundred years to greet our eyes to- 
night, and to reassure us that the hand that made 
it is divine. If this is true of physical 
forces, how much more true is it of the spiritual 
and the moral and the intellectual forces! In 
these days, when steam and electricity have an- 
nihilated space and time, and the press on the 
wings of the morning carries to the uttermost 
part of the earth every word spoken that is worth 
while and every deed done that is worth know- 

165 



DR. STORES 'S JUBILEE 

ing, it needs must be that a man who has lived as 
Dr. Storrs has lived, who has spoken, who has 
written as he has written, must be, as he is, the 
common property of the whole nation. 

I want to correct another error which seems 
to have crept into some of the remarks made 
here to-night. I want to say that Brooklyn has 
not made Dr. Storrs all that he is to-day. 
Of course propinquity, environment, does a great 
deal, and I admit that no man can live in Brook- 
lyn fifty years without showing the marks of it. 
You can do a great deal for a man. Your fresh 
and breezy atmosphere on the heights, where he 
lives— fresh every morning from bay or from 
the sound— your genial, social life, your great 
charities, your mental culture and your artistic 
development, your churches, your schools, and li- 
braries, your early retiring habits, and your sound 
sleep, must tell in the end, long before fifty years 
have passed. But there are things in the makeup 
of a man that even such a city as Brooklyn cannot 
accomplish. A man owes something in that mat- 
ter to his father and mother. The men who do the 
great deeds and think the great thoughts and 
live the grand lives, owe it in the main to the stuff 
that is born in them and not for what is put on 
from the outside. Let us see. In this very in- 
stance the powerful brain, whose effulgence lights 
and enamors a whole community of one million 
and a quarter people, the voice that lifts and car- 
ries a great audience upon its vibration, filling 
every ear with the thrill of harmony delighting 

166 



DR. STORES 'S JUBILEE 

all, the personal presence which as it walks by 
the way attracts and delights, as by a magnetic 
power, and influences all who come within its 
reach, the vigor of constitution and the power of 
labor that ennoble the man and enable him to bear 
all the responsibilities, all the trials, all the 
achievements of three score years and ten, and 
the great heart that responds in sympathy to the 
sorrows of friends or lights up in joy at their 
joys, or kindles in fiery indignation at their sins, 
all these are the gift of God, of nature, of the 
father and the mother and who knows how many 
progenitors before them. 

Dr. Holmes, who always had a ready answer for 
every question, is said to have replied to an 
anxious mother who put to him the question, 
" Doctor, at what age should the education of a 
child begin? " " Madam, at least 100 years be- 
fore he is born." Now if Dr. Holmes had seen 
Dr. Storrs in his cradle— it seems rather odd to 
imagine Dr. Storrs in his cradle, but he was there 
once, and not very long ago either, — and let me 
tell you, dear young women, that he kicked as lus- 
tily and crowed as loud, if not a little louder, than 
your baby did when he was taken from his bath 
this morning— now, Dr. Holmes would have said 
this child's education began 200 or 300 years, in- 
stead of 100 years, before he was born. Let us 
see. When Spenser, the first great master of 
verbal music in the English tongue, lighting the 
age of Elizabeth with the sweet sunshine and 
poetic luxury of the " Faery Queen; " — when 

167 



DR. STORES 'S JUBILEE 

Bacon taught men a new way of thinking and 
brought the human intellect back from the direst 
depths of superstition, in which it had long been 
groping, into the bright highway of reason and 
intelligence on which it has marched to triumph 
until now; — when Shakespeare, with that mar- 
velous, poetic, creative insight unlocked the se- 
crets of the human heart, and laid bare all its mo- 
tives and movements, with a searchlight more 
keen than that with which the Roentgen rays now 
inspect the interior of our poor bodies; — when 
Milton, in lofty tone and noble spirit that lifted 
the English language among the tongues of men, 
produced his great book to justify the ways of 
God to man; — when Cromwell, by his Ironsides, 
smote the royal hosts with the sword of the spirit, 
and lighted an inextinguishable fire of liberty for 
the Anglo-Saxon race; — when the revisers of the 
English Bible gathered at Hampton Court at the 
summons of King James, and gave us that match- 
less book, the only book, the one book for readers, 
thinkers, scholars, speakers, men, women and 
children— if we can have but one book, 0, save us 
that — when Burke, speaking to empty benches in 
the House of Commons all those magnificent ora- 
tions, was teaching all the coming orators of Eng- 
land and America how to speak; — all these were 
laying the foundation of education for this child. 
How well he has followed what they taught, 
how faithful a pupil he has been at their feet you 
all know ; and I am certain, if you were to rob him 
now of the company of these kindred spirits, 

168 



DR. STORRS'S JUBILEE 

with whom he has kept such glad communion for 
these fifty years, his heart would soon begin to 
fail. And then, too, we must remember, keeping 
our eyes outside of Brooklyn still, we must re- 
member that this man was born in New England 
and that she claims her share in this great jubi- 
lee. Now no man can choose the place of his 
birth. If we could what a mess of it we should 
make, and how different our fates would be. But 
what a great piece of luck it was to be born in 
Braintree of all places in the world. Suppose 
this man had had the choice between Brain- 
tree and Deadwood, and had chosen the wrong 
place, where would he, where would Brooklyn, 
where would you have been to-night? The fruit 
of the brain tree must be reason, knowledge, 
wisdom, intelligence, invention, fancy, imagina- 
tion, wit, humor, all those qualities that Cicero 
enumerates as going to make up the perfect ora- 
tor. Now there are orators and orators. You 
need not try to tell a Brooklyn audience what a 
real orator is. They know the real thing by sight 
and by sound from the other kind, the other kind 
that we have heard a good deal of lately. In 
face and figure they are to all outward appear- 
ance very much alike, but for all other qualities 
they differ as much from each other as Apollo 
and Phaethon. 

I would like to tell you a mythological story. 
I will awaken the tale in your mind where it has 
been slumbering in the gray matter. It is a theo- 
logical tale, too. Apollo was the god of the light, 

169 



DR. STOKES'S JUBILEE 

the day. Prophecy, poetry and music followed in 
his train. He drove the fiery steeds of the sun. 
He kept them well in hand, and as he traversed 
the lands and the skies he carried light and 
warmth and order and peace and universal har- 
mony among gods and men. Phaethon was young, 
aspiring, scatter brained, and he thought that if 
he could only drive that fiery team for one day he, 
too, might sit in the great white palace, and might 
rule over gods and men. He started out in the 
morning on a chariot adventure. Hope elevated, 
joy lighted his crest. But soon he drove too 
near the serpent in the hopes of getting the apple 
from his grasp. The fiery steeds took fright. He 
lost his head and dropped the reins. His flash- 
ing wheels set the world on fire. People thought 
they could see the approaching dissolution of the 
world beginning to shape itself. They thought 
that everything was going to the dev— destruc- 
tion— I meant to say destruction. They went home 
and told their wives and children they would 
have to give up everything; that all was lost if 
Phaethon was not captured. At last a mighty 
thunderbolt answered their prayer. It was the 
vox populi vox dei, dashing the mad charioteer 
from his place. Peace was restored and order, 
prosperity and everything good went on as be- 
fore. 

I do not like to go on after my time has come 
to go off. I wanted to say a word about New 
England influence. I shall say a serious word. 
All the generations from the Mayflower down 

170 



DE. STORES 'S JUBILEE 

were busy in shaping the future of Dr. Storrs. It 
was not for nothing that for two centuries they 
shunned delight and lived laborious days. Their 
toil, their suffering, their sacrifices, their heroism, 
their zeal for education at any cost, their fidelity 
to God, their sense of duty overruling all senses, 
all appetites, all passions— all these were worked 
into the strain of descent that was the rich in- 
heritance of their children. And so I say that 
when Dr. Storrs came here in the freshness of his 
manhood and gave himself to this church and to 
this city, Massachusetts from the landing of the 
Pilgrims, New England from the beginning came 
with him and has been represented in him incar- 
nate here for the last fifty years. 

And then the days that tried men's souls, the 
revolutionary days, were busy in training him. 
Why, there is not an event in all that war which 
was waged for our liberty, that is not as familiar 
to him as the objects in his study. On the 19th of 
April his waking dreams are of the lantern hung 
out from the tower of the old North church. He 
sees the ride of Paul Eevere, the battle on the 
ground where his people saw the dawn of Amer- 
ica and then, going on to Concord, he reads with 
Emerson how 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 
On June 17 he stands in imagination on Bunker 
Hill, where it was first demonstrated that the 

171 



DR. STORRS'S JUBILEE 

raw militia of America could withstand the 
trained veterans of Europe, and he witnesses that 
retreat more glorious than any victory, and so 
through all the periods of the war he is abso- 
lutely at home. 

And then, too, the great civil triumphs he 
knows of as well. On the Fourth of July he stands 
under the old liberty bell with John Hancock and 
his associates as they put their names to the 
Declaration of Independence. On the 17th of 
September he stands again in the same spot with 
Washington, Franklin and Hancock, to sign the 
great Constitution under which America was to 
live and be free forever. On the 30th of April he 
is in fancy in front of the old Federal Hall in 
Wall Street, and sees the father of his country 
take his solemn oath ever to support that Con- 
stitution. 

These things are woven in his brain. But I 
must keep you no longer from what you have 
come here to-night to hear, for I believe it was 
not to hear Mayor Low, nor anything that I 
could say, but that which attracted you here to- 
night was the certainty that there would be a 
response to the citizens of Brooklyn by him who 
is so dear to all your hearts. Length of days 
is in the right hand of God. May He pour it out 
in the fullest measure upon the head of his 
faithful servant, may he live longer than I have 
time to tell his years, ever beloved and respected, 
and as old time shall call him to his end may 
goodness and he fill up one monument. 

172 



OUE PEOFESSION 



OUR PROFESSION 

An address delivered before the Chicago Bar Association, Friday, 
February 4, 1898. 

NO language can express my gratitude for 
your cordial invitation to me — as unex- 
pected as it was undeserved — or my appreciation 
of your truly overwhelming hospitality and your 
enthusiastic greeting. I recognize it as a spon- 
taneous expression of that hearty sympathy and 
fraternal good will, which this great and learned 
and powerful har of the centre of the continent 
feels for its brethren in the Atlantic states and 
in the nation at large. I am a life-long believer 
in the brotherhood of the American Bar, and so 
I could not find it in my heart to decline your in- 
vitation, although to accept it seemed almost to 
imply that some merit of my own had brought it 
upon me. 

I had long heard of the unstinted hospitality 
of Chicago. I fully realized it on my arrival. No 
sooner had I reached the Auditorium than I was 
waited upon by the entire press of Chicago in a 
body. They tendered me the freedom of the city 
wrapped up in a newspaper. They opened their 
columns to me to address all mankind freely on ev- 
ery subject. The} 7 were very curious people. Their 
extreme youth demonstrated the truth of what I 

175 



OUR PEOFESSION 

had heard, that Chicago relies for its best work 
upon its young men. Each one of them seemed to 
carry a kodak in his eye, and they took views of 
me from every quarter of the world, New York, 
Washington, Hawaii, Cuba, China and St. Peters- 
burg. They came within an ace of taking my 
life. They told me of a thousand incidents in my 
career which never happened, and put into my 
mouth a hundred jokes which I never uttered. 
They told me exactly how much I was worth, 
which my wife and children will be very glad to 
hear. At last one of them, more forward than 
the rest, declared, " Well, Mr. Choate, you 
must have attended at least a million dinners." 
As that, at one dinner a day would carry me back, 
according to Dr. Schliemann, almost to the 
Trojan war and make me the pot companion of 
Agamemnon and Ulysses or of Priam and Hector, 
I denied the soft impeachment; I told them that 
my life was altogether quiet and domestic, that I 
always avoided the scorching glare of publicity, 
when I could keep in the shade, and that I liked 
nothing so much as to be let alone. So they kindly 
took their departure, promising to be with mc 
again to-night, and no doubt every child of them 
is among us taking notes, and ' * Faith, he '11 print 
'em. ' ' 

As I flew hither on the wings of night, in that 
marvellous train which brings us in absolute com- 
fort and luxury a thousand miles in twenty-four 
hours, through cities, towns and villages teeming 
with riches and plenty, which to the pioneers of 

176 



OUR PROFESSION 

America would have been a journey of three 
months through the wilderness, I could not help 
thinking how time and space between New York 
and Chicago have utterly vanished ; and how these 
two greatest cities of the Western Hemisphere 
are henceforth one in interest, in sympathy, in 
culture and in duty. The greater New York may 
not include Chicago within its growing boun- 
daries, but Chicago, with its far-reaching influ- 
ence and power, will touch and embrace New York. 
In one respect you have an immense advantage 
over us — if New York is our gateway to Europe 
— Chicago is the gateway, East and West and 
North and South, not of our nation only, but of 
the whole continent. As was said of Rome in im- 
perial days, " all roads lead to Chicago.' ' Here 
the great throbbing centre sends forth life to the 
whole body of America. These bands of steel 
which radiate from here in every direction are 
the arteries and veins which convey and reconvey 
the very life blood between the heart of the na- 
tion and its utmost extremities — these tiny 
threads of wire reaching from Chicago to every 
city and village and almost literally to every 
household in the land, constitute the nervous sys- 
tem which keeps the whole alive with thought and 
soul and brain. 

One future, one hope, one destiny awaits us 
all alike — if one section suffers, all the rest will 
suffer with it — if one member perishes the whole 
body will perish at the same time. And if there 
is, which I do not believe, a growing jealousy and 

177 



OUK PROFESSION 

strain between East and West, Chicago with her 
equal hold on both must be the mediator, and we 
of New York may well envy the share which the 
bar of Chicago will take in such a conciliation. 

When I look around me on this great company 
of busy and successful lawyers, resting for a mo- 
ment from their never-ending labors, when I study 
the lines which time has traced upon their fea- 
tures, I can easily see that success in our profes- 
sion rests everywhere upon the same foundation. 
It is the same old story of the sound mind and 
the honest heart in the sound body. The sound 
body is at the bottom of it all. The stomach is 
indeed the key of all professional eminence. If 
that goes back on you, you might as well throw 
up the sponge. And sleep without worry must 
cherish and nourish it all the time. 

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, 

The death of each day's life, 

Sore labor's bath, balm of hurt minds. 

Great nature's second course 

Chief nourisher in life's feast. 

Why should we worry over miseries and trou- 
bles which concern our clients only, and not us at 
all? Our entire responsibility ends when we have 
done our best, and the rest belongs to the judges 
and juries or the clients themselves, and if we 
fail the fault lies with the former for being so 
dull, or so inappreciative of our efforts and argu- 
ments, or with the latter for having such bad and 

178 



OUR PROFESSION 

hopeless eases. Next comes that patient industry 
which never flinches and never falters. 

And then the ' i unconquerable will with courage 
never to submit or yield, ' ' which is success itself. 
I have known all the leaders who have flourished 
at the eastern bar for forty years, and most of 
those from other parts of the country, and al- 
though no two of them were alike in physical or 
mental endowments, all agreed in this one moral 
quality — a grim tenacity of purpose to hang on 
and hold out through everything and against 
everything until the end was reached — Then 
sprinkle in the mental qualities each to suit his 
own taste, and according to what he happens to 
have on hand — But last and more than all what 
Mr. Emerson said of character is far more true 
in our profession than anywhere else, that char- 
acter is a far higher power than intellect, and 
character and conscience in the long run are sure 
to come out ahead. 

So, if I rightly read your lineaments, this great 
bar of Chicago is built up on health, industry, 
courage, brains, character and conscience, and 
must hold its own against the world. 

When I recall some of the great names that 
have graced and ennobled the legal annals of this 
City and State, first and foremost always, the im- 
mortal Lincoln, who by sheer force of his intellect, 
in spite of every possible disadvantage, became 
eminent in his profession here, and then by genius 
in debate exposed to the listening nation the fatal 
question on which its destiny hung, and at last 

179 



OUR PROFESSION 

by the matchless power of his sublime character 
carried it through blood and fire to the trium- 
phant solution of that question — to a Union never 
again to be shaken, because founded on absolute 
and equal justice to men of every color, race and 
creed, and to that new birth of freedom which he 
proclaimed at Gettysburg. And again, when I 
recall the name of Lyman Trumbull, through a 
long life a great champion in the legal arena, and 
who once in the very prime of his life and the 
summit of his powers, had the good fortune to 
render a great service to his country, when, be- 
lieving as he did that the great executive office of 
the nation itself was on trial, he cast a decisive 
vote to preserve it, although at the sacrifice of his 
political prospects and power, — When I remem- 
ber the brilliant and accomplished Wirt Dexter, 
who transplanted from the old Bay State the 
prestige and tradition of a family of great law- 
yers and maintained it here with new and undi- 
minished lustre — and then your own Goudy, so 
lately lost and so lamented, not here only, but 
wherever the capacity to solve great questions 
and handle great affairs, by skill, by tact, by 
wisdom and by learning, was appreciated and 
honored. When I recall the signal service to the 
nation and to human welfare which the courts of 
this region, both State and Federal, have ren- 
dered — how when anarchy seemed on the point 
of gaining the mastery they have mastered it — 
by courage, by reason, by the intrepid exercise 
of the judicial power, without regard to personal 

180 



OUR PROFESSION 

danger or consequences, and how by the steady 
and wise labor of half a century they have built 
up your system of law and equity to a height 
which commands respect and authority in all 
places and in all courts — I feel that New York 
can look to Chicago and Illinois for light and lead- 
ing, with the same faith and confidence that you 
in turn look back to her. 

When I contemplate your wonderful city, and 
contrast it with what it was when I first saw it 
forty-three years ago, when it had but 80,000 in- 
habitants, and its streets were almost submerged 
beneath the waters of the lake — when I survey its 
commerce, its manufactures, its parks and muse- 
ums and charities, its grand boulevards, its 
splendid architecture and towering edifices — 
above all when I see, to use the language of Burke, 
how population shoots in this quarter of the land, 
I can realize how it was that the people of New 
York City, alarmed at your progress and jealous 
of your mighty strides to power, hit upon the 
scheme of Greater New York in the vain hope of 
keeping ahead of Chicago. They heard that your 
population was doubling every ten years — that 
your area was expanding to an extent as bound- 
less as the prairies that surround it — that you 
had more money than you knew what to do with, 
and were already becoming the bankers and 
money lenders of Europe, and they determined 
by the artificial scheme of annexation to circum- 
vent you — vain hope and foolish expectation. 
You will go on as you have before and continued 

181 



OUR PEOFESSION 

■until now. Here is to be the favorite home of 
the new American, that composite creature in 
whose veins the mingled strains of all the scat- 
tered branches of the Aryan race unite, with 
whose energy and daring and speed and wind and 
bottom, the tired cities of the Ea?t will strive in 
vain to keep an even pace. 

We are all lawyers here to-night, and by cour- 
tesy we may for the occasion include even the 
judges as members of our craft. Although they 
have soared aloft on silken wings to a higher and 
nobler sphere, they are not unwilling to return 
to us on nights like this, as the retired tallow 
chandler was wont to return to the shop on melt- 
ing days. How delightful it is to meet them on an 
even keel and at short range and speak our minds 
freely without any fear of being committed for 
contempt. There's a divinity that doth hedge a 
judge, I know, but to-night the hedge is down and 
they are very fair game indeed. 

Let me speak of our noble profession and of 
some of the reasons we have for loving and hon- 
oring it — above all others. 

In the first place, I maintain that in no other 
occupation to which men can devote their lives, is 
there a nobler intellectual pursuit, or a higher 
moral standard, than that which inspires and per- 
vades the ranks of the legal profession. To estab- 
lish justice, to maintain the rights of men, to 
defend the helpless and oppressed, to succor in- 
nocence and to punish guilt, to aid in the solution 
of those great questions, legal and constitutional, 

182 



OUR PROFESSION 

which are constantly being evolved from the ever 
varying affairs and business of men — are duties 
that may well challenge the best powers of man's 
intellect and the noblest qualities of the human 
heart. I do not, of course, mean to say that 
among the ninety thousand lawyers whom the 
census counts in our seventy millions of people, 
there is not much base alloy — I speak of that 
great body of active and laborious practitioners 
upon whom rests the responsibility of substantial 
litigations and the conduct and guidance of im- 
portant affairs; you will look in vain elsewhere 
for more spotless honor, more absolute devotion, 
more patient industry, more conscientious fidelity 
than among these. 

I am not unmindful of that ever-mooted ques- 
tion, how we can, with the strictest honor, main- 
tain the side that is wrong, and the suggestion 
that as only one side can be right in every law- 
suit, we must half the time be struggling for in- 
justice. But that vexed question has long been 
settled by the common sense of mankind. It is 
only out of the contest of facts and of brains 
that the right can ever be evolved — only on the 
anvil of discussion that the spark of truth can 
be struck out. Perfect justice, as Judge Story 
said, " Belongs to one judgment seat only — to 
that which is linked to the throne of God — but 
human tribunals can never do justice and decide 
for the right until both sides have been fully 
heard. ' ' When Jeremiah Evarts, the father of my 
great master in the law, and himself a truly great 

183 



OUR PROFESSION 

and righteous man, had graduated from Yale and 
was considering the law as his profession, this 
same question disturbed his honest and conscien- 
tious mind, and he consulted Judge Ellsworth, 
afterwards Chief Justice of the United States, 
who solved his doubts by advising him that any 
cause that was fit for any court to hear was fit 
for any lawyer to present on either side, and 
that neither judge nor counsel had the right to 
prejudge the case until both sides had been heard, 
and he told him of Sir Matthew Hale, one of the 
most righteous lawyers and judges in English his- 
tory, who began with the same misgivings, but 
modified his views when several causes that he 
had condemned and rejected proved finally to be 
good. 

Nor is ours the only profession in which the 
same question has been agitated, for we read 
in the life of John Milton that when his good 
old father had lavished a good part of his fortune 
upon his education at Cambridge until he had 
taken his degree of master of arts, having no 
other thought than that his son should devote his 
great character, intellect and eloquence to the 
church — the youthful poet after a full study of 
the question decided for himself that he could not 
enter a profession which would require him to 
advocate what he did not believe to be true. 

Again, we love the law because among all the 
learned professions, it is the one that involves 
the study and the pursuit of a stable and 
exact science. Theology, it is true, was once con- 

184 



OUR PROFESSION 

sidered an immutable science — but how has it? 
changed from age to age and even from year to 
year. We were bred to believe that everything and 
every word within the four corners of Holy Writ 
was absolutely inspired truth. But now upon 
what unhappy times have we fallen, in which the 
props of our faith are being knocked from under 
us, day by day. Only a month or so ago the pas- 
tor of Plymouth Church announced that the sacred 
story of Jonah and the whale was only a myth, 
that the whale did not swallow Jonah or hold him 
in his stomach for three days or vomit him up on 
the shore at all — and so that charming narrative, 
to which we had pinned our faith in youth and 
manhood as one inspired piece of history which 
we could and must believe, vanished forever from 
our mental vision. 

Not to be outdone by Dr. Abbott, another of 
our metropolitan divines has declared that in the 
deluge the waters did not cover the whole earth, 
and so we must abandon the delightful and 
tragic drama which has fascinated the world for 
thousands of years, of Noah and the ark, and 
the destruction of the wicked, and the dove and 
the olive branch, and the only true theory of 
the invention of the rainbow. And last of all a 
distinguished bishop announces at a public 
dinner that nowadays nobody but printers be- 
lieve in the existence of a personal devil. Why, 
without him, where shall we be? And who will 
foment the litigations for our successors to con- 
duct or to settle? And now it only remains for 

185 



OUR PROFESSION 

some great Chicago divine to discover that Nebu- 
chadnezzar did not really eat grass — that his skin 
was not really wet with the dews of heaven, until 
his hair became as eagles ' feathers, and his nails 
as birds' claws. So will the foundations of our 
faith be utterly destroyed, and we can no longer 
cherish that signal chapter of religious history, 
which has come to us straight from Babylon to 
Chicago, and which was at the same time one of 
the greatest political triumphs on record — and 
worthy of perpetual imitation, for how can we 
better dispose of our oppressors, of our unjust 
rulers, governors, judges, senators, than by turn- 
ing them out to grass ? 

And then as to medicine, how its practice and 
its theories succeed each other in rapid revolu- 
tion, so that what were good methods and healing 
doses, and saving prescriptions a generation ago, 
are now condemned as poisons and nostrums, and 
all the past is adjudged to be empirical. 

Meanwhile, " the common law, like a nursing 
father, makes void the part where the fault is and 
preserves the rest," as it has been doing for cen- 
turies, and we are busy applying to each new 
case as it arises, the same principles, the same 
rules of right and justice, which have been estab- 
lished for many generations. We preserve the 
real fruit and throw away the rind. The techni- 
calities which have too long encrusted the law 
have been stripped away, and now, like Lord 
Mansfield, our judges try to solve every case by 
common sense and the sense of justice, and the 

186 



OUR PROFESSION 

sense of honor, which, in their highest manifesta- 
tion, constitute the most eminent and valuable 
judicial qualities. 

We hear sometimes that the American Bar has 
degenerated, that it does not equal its predeces- 
sors in power and character and influence, but this 
I utterly deny. To the demands which each gen- 
eration makes upon it, it is always adequate. 
Times change and men change with them. The 
intense pressure of modern life and business 
leaves its mark upon our profession, as upon 
every other vocation. What once could be said in 
three days must now be said in two hours — what 
once could be done in a month must now be done 
in a day, and for one I do not hesitate to say that 
for skill, efficiency, utility and power, the service 
which our profession lends to the community to- 
day has not been surpassed in any former genera- 
tion. It must be so. Take from the Bar of New 
York, as it stands, a hundred of its leading practi- 
tioners in court and in office, and fifty of equal 
rank from the Bar of Chicago, and they will do 
more and better work than any equal number in 
any past age. 

So when these carpers who would laud the past 
at the expense of the present, ask me if the Bench 
of to-day is what it was in the olden time, I an- 
swer No, it is better qualified for the work it has 
to do than any of the old judges would have been. 
The Bench, like the Bar of every generation, is 
evolved from the character and condition of the 
age and the demands which it makes upon the 

187 



OUR PROFESSION 

profession. Take the Supreme Court of the 
United States as the most striking and illustrious 
example. When John Jay, the first chief justice, 
presided, the court was almost always adjourned 
because there were no cases to be heard. All the 
time that Marshall presided the records were 
never printed — the original manuscript record 
was handed along the bench for the several judges 
to examine. Webster and Pinkney and their com- 
peers would go in from the senate to the court, 
which sat three days in the week, and agree upon 
a day for argument two or three months ahead, 
and then appear and argue without limit of time — 
two or three days apiece, as the case might be. 
Arguments concluded, Marshall and Story could 
take the great cases to Richmond and to Salem, 
and have weeks or months to prepare those 
learned and elaborate opinions which really laid 
the foundations of our Federal law, and settled 
the Constitution upon an imperishable basis. 
Now, steam and electricity and the telegraph and 
telephone and the intense pressure of business 
which has grown out of these, have changed the 
whole order of things, and I prefer to adapt the 
question to the changed conditions and to turn it 
end for end and to ask: Could Marshall and 
Story and their associates, if now summoned to 
the task, do the work which Fuller and Harlan 
and their associates discharge so ably, so conscien- 
tiously and so well? The question answers itself: 
Let the dead past bury its dead. Gathering all 
the light it can from the past, and responsible to 

188 



OUR PROFESSION 

the future for the results of its conduct, the living 
present suffices for its own work. 

There is one respect, I admit, in which we have 
declined, and which for one I do greatly deplore 
— the cultivation of the fraternal and social spirit 
among ourselves has been almost abandoned, and 
it ought to be revived and transmitted. In thirty 
years we have had but two Bar dinners in New 
York, and our younger brethren only know by 
tradition how those who preceded us mitigated 
the austerity of the law by constant social festivi- 
ties — how they went on circuit as a band of broth- 
ers — and however lustily they might contend in 
the court room, outside of it they were boon 
companions. 

Our English brethren set us a most worthy 
example in this regard. 

In Shakespeare's time, when he haunted the 
Mermaid Tavern in company with Ben Jonson, 
he saw the barristers come in from the courts, and 
from what he saw he puts into the mouth of Tra- 
nio in the Taming of the Shrew: 

Please ye we may contrive this afternoon, 
And quaff carouses to our Mistress' health, 
And do as adversaries do in law — 
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. 

The Inns of Court have been the scenes of con- 
stant daily intercourse, and not rarely of the most 
jovial festivities. From the times of Charles the 
First, when they contrived their great historic 
masque for the entertainment of the king and 

189 



OUR PEOFESSION 

queen at court, a jollification in which the greatest 
barristers of the day, such as Hyde, afterwards 
Earl of Clarendon, and John Selden, whose de- 
lightful table talk has come down to us through 
two centuries and a half, and Attorney General 
Noy and Bullstrode Whitlock, took an active part, 
down to the days of Lord Coleridge and Sir 
Charles Russell, and Sir Frank Lockwood, whose 
recent death, so untimely and so lamented, has 
been a serious loss to the profession, both here 
and there, the London barristers have been the 
lights of each succeeding age — the leaven that 
leavened the whole lump of English life and so- 
ciety. 

Let us imitate a little more their bright and 
shining example — let us lead lives less dry — 
less sterile — less a matter of pure and unmiti- 
gated business — let us each ride not only a horse, 
but a hobby, also — above all, let us get all the 
entertainment we can out of our work as we go 
along, for we may rest assured that if we post- 
pone the fun of life until the work is done it will 
never come, for it will find us as dry and dusty 
as so many remainder biscuits after a voyage. So 
I trust that we in New York shall imitate your 
example, and that this occasion may be only the 
beginning of a real interchange of a living broth- 
erhood between the Bar Associations of our two 
great and noble cities. 

But there is one respect in which the American 
Bar has far outshone not only its brethren in 
England, but in every other country of modern 

190 



OUR PROFESSION 

times. I mean in its great share in the conduct 
and shaping of public affairs. In all our history, 
among the gallant champions of liberty, the wise 
founders of free states, the framers and defend- 
ers of free constitutions and of the rights of the 
people under them, the lawyers of America have 
ever been foremost. I refer not now to official 
life, though all the great civil offices, State and 
Federal, have always been, are now, and always 
must and will be, to a large degree filled from 
their ranks — but I speak of that lofty public and 
patriotic spirit for the people's good, which ought 
to animate the heart of every lawyer worthy of 
the name. When James Otis resigned his rich 
office as crown advocate, to maintain the cause 
of the merchants and the people of Boston against 
the oppression of general warrants, refusing all 
rewards, saying, " in such a cause I despise all 
fees, ,, and delivered in the old State House that 
great plea for popular rights, so telling, so over- 
whelming, that John Adams, who was present, 
declared long afterwards that on that day and in 
that room " the child Independence was born," 
he set the pace for all the future lawyers of 
America. When John Adams and Josiah Quincy, 
Jr., braved the popular wrath in their successful 
defense of Captain Preston and his British sol- 
diers for their part in the Boston massacre — and 
when Patrick Henry, in that little court-house in 
Virginia, argued the Parsons' cause, and dis- 
played for the first time his transcendent power 
as the people 's orator, they embodied that public 

191 



OUR PROFESSION 

spirit which has animated the patriotism of the 
profession ever since. 

I believe that with one consent the common 
judgment of mankind would point to Hamilton, 
Webster and Lincoln as the three American law- 
yers whose actual public services had most largely 
contributed to the formation and preservation of 
the Constitution, on whose continuance the hopes 
of civil liberty for all coming time depend. God 
made them greater than the rest, and the oppor- 
tunities came to them for great achievements 
which found each in turn ready and able for the 
service demanded. Hamilton's creative genius 
was displayed in the part he took in framing the 
Constitution, and again in securing its adoption, 
and finally in launching the new government in 
practical and successful operation under it, which 
probably surpasses any political service ever 
rendered by one man in our national history. To 
Webster I ascribe a share second to that of no 
other man in the final triumph of the Constitution 
and the Union over all their foes. It has been 
the fashion of late years to belittle him because 
of the infirmities of his declining years, but for 
two entire generations he was at all times and 
in all places inculcating in the breasts of the 
youth of America that ardent patriotism which in- 
spired his own — that devotion to the flag which 
would compel them to follow it wherever freedom 
led and to the Union one and inseparable. So 
that at last when the fatal summons from Sumter 
sounded, though dead, he yet spoke to them, his 

192 



OUR PROFESSION 

heart, which had warmed, his brain, which had 
illuminated New England for them and their fath- 
ers seemed to live once more — and under his in- 
spiration still they marched to death or to victory 
— but at all hazards as he had taught them to save 
the Union without which all else was lost. 

Of Lincoln, why should I try to say more in 
this presence, or in this city or state? History 
has long since decided that to him under God the 
world owes it, that government of the people by 
the people and for the people has not perished 
from the earth. A thousand years from now his 
name will stand as bright as to-day as the syno- 
nym of freedom and free government. Oppor- 
tunities such as these three great representatives 
enjoyed and improved may not come to every or 
to any generation of American lawyers. But at 
all times, and especially in this our day, great 
public duties await us. So long as the Supreme 
Court exists to be attacked and defended — that 
sheet anchor of our liberties and of our govern- 
ment — so long as the public credit and good faith 
of this great nation are in peril — so long as the 
right of property which lies at the root of all civil 
government is scouted, and the three inalienable 
rights to life, to liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
ness, which the Declaration of Independence pro- 
claimed and the Constitution has guaranteed alike 
against the action of Congress and of the States, 
are in jeopardy, so long will great public service 
be demanded of the Bar. 

Let us magnify our calling. Let us be true to 
193 



OUB PBOFESSION 

these great occasions, and respond with all onr 
might to these great demands, so that when our 
work is done, of ns at least it may be said that we 
transmitted onr profession to onr successors as 
great, as useful and as spotless as it came to our 
hands. 



194 



TRIAL BY JURY, 



TRIAL BY JURY 

Address delivered before the American Bar Association, Saratoga, 
August 18, 1898. 

WE meet at a most auspicious moment. Since 
this Association last assembled for its 
annual conference the nation has been engaged 
in a war which has absorbed all thoughts, and 
necessarily distracted us from those peaceful pur- 
poses which annually bring us together. But now, 
with unexpected suddenness, at the cost of great 
treasure and much precious blood of our heroes, 
the truly noble object of the war has been accom- 
plished, and peace is already in sight. It might 
perhaps be expected that in accepting the very 
great honor of delivering the annual address pro- 
vided by your constitution, I should enter upon 
a discussion of some of those important questions 
which must arise out of the consequences and re- 
sults of the war. 

It is obvious that all such questions, as they 
arise, must naturally engage the best thought 
and the noblest and most patriotic exertions of 
our profession, which has always exercised a 
controlling influence upon controversies about 
Constitutional power and national policy, and to 
whose special keeping is entrusted the study of 
those principles of right and justice, which must 

197 



TKIAL BY JUEY 

govern the conduct of nations, as well as of the 
individuals who compose them. 

At all the great and critical points of our 
national progress the American Bar has found 
its appropriate spokesman for the public 
honor and the public safety. When Otis, against 
the malignant power of the British Crown, 
pleaded for the right of every citizen to be 
secure against tyranny in his person, his home 
and his papers, and set the ball of freedom 
rolling — when Henry led the friends of Colonial 
rights in Virginia and shook the Continent by 
the thunder of his eloquence — when Hamilton 
by the main strength of his arguments car- 
ried the Federal Constitution against a defiant 
majority in the New York Convention — when 
Webster by his majestic speech inculcated in the 
hearts of Americans that flaming spirit of nation- 
ality which saved the Union twice and will pre- 
serve it forever ; — when Fessenden and Trumbull 
sacrificed their political fortunes to rescue the 
great office of the Federal Executive from de- 
struction, they furnished examples for the law- 
yers of all times to stand at all hazards for public 
justice and for public honor. 

But it seems to me that it would be out of 
place for us to-day to undertake to pronounce, 
as the organized representatives of the Amer- 
ican Bar, upon the possible, but as yet unformu- 
lated, questions in diplomacy, in policy, and in 
public law, which will naturally follow upon such 
a momentous struggle and such overwhelming 

1 OQ 



TEIAL BY JURY 

victories by sea and land. In the meantime, I 
prefer, as I hope you prefer, to rely upon the 
wisdom and the patience, the courage and the 
firmness, of the President and his constitutional 
advisers, who have conducted the campaigns of 
our gallant army and navy to swift and sweep- 
ing victory. 

You will remember that only two years ago in 
this very presence, the Lord Chief Justice of 
England, in his admirable discourse before you on 
arbitration, declared, with your unanimous ap- 
proval, that there may be even greater calamities 
than war, and that national dishonor is one of 
them. Nothing can be more certain now, than 
that we should have incurred real national dis- 
honor if we had any longer refrained from inter- 
vening for the rescue of our oppressed and down- 
trodden neighbors. In that intervention war was 
the last argument and the only really effective 
one. The God of Battles and the judgment of the 
Nations have completely vindicated that step, and 
I have no fear that ambition for dominion or lust 
of glory will bring upon us any calamity or dis- 
honor whatever. 

In truth, the generous, the magnanimous terms 
of peace offered to our fallen and prostrate foes 
have already demonstrated that. The Constitu- 
tional Power to declare war is in Congress, but 
the equally important power to make peace rests 
with the President, subject to the subse- 
quent approval of the Senate as to the terms of 
the treaty. It rests safely with him, and 

199 



TKIAL BY JURY 

for one I am not in favor of intruding upon him 
too much outside advice and assistance. The war, 
of course, could not cease until every foot of 
American soil was purged of the last vestige of 
Spanish power ; but in war, as in law, the beaten 
party must pay the costs, and in settling the 
terms of peace, we meet novel problems and seri- 
ous and unexpected responsibilities, which the 
triumph of our arms has imposed upon us in both 
hemispheres. These responsibilities we cannot 
shirk if we would, and would not if we could, and 
in dealing with them the government must not 
be held too rigidly to purposes and expectations 
declared before the commencement of the war, 
and in utter ignorance of its possible results. 

If that had been the rule, our fathers would 
never have been permitted to declare and main- 
tain their independence, for it was only a month 
before the battle of Lexington, that Frank- 
lin declared to Lord Chatham that he had 
travelled far and wide in America and had 
found not one man, drunk or sober, who was 
in favor of independence. If that had been 
the rule, the proclamation of emancipation could 
never have been issued, and the shame of 
slavery would still blot the stars upon our flag; 
— for at the outset nothing was more distinctly 
declared by Lincoln and his advisers, than that 
slavery, where it existed, would not be interfered 
with. In war, events change the situation very 
rapidly, and only when the end crowns the work 
shall we truly comprehend the great questions 

200 



TRIAL BY JURY 

which await us. In the meantime, let us trust the 
President, who has our national honor most truly 
and wisely at heart. 

Recurring, then, to the more strictly profes- 
sional objects of our meeting, and selecting a topic 
pertaining to the science of jurisprudence, which 
this Association was organized to promote, I have 
thought that you would indulge me for a brief 
hour in considering a subject to which I could 
bring at least the results and convictions of a 
large experience, and which I have greatly at 
heart — a subject so trite, that perhaps nothing 
new can be said about it, which has been more dis- 
cussed than any other, but which yet remains a 
subject of ever fresh and vital interest to every 
American lawyer and citizen — the trial by jury. 

Since you last met, a thrilling event of prime 
importance in its relations to jurisprudence has 
occurred in France, which must have arrested the 
attention of every thoughtful observer, and have 
led especially those sagacious theorists, who have 
never tired of denouncing trial by jury, and those 
experimental philosophers and legislators who 
are always seeking to limit or to mutilate it, or 
tamper with it in some way or other, to recon- 
sider the matter and to think once more whether 
we should not do better to let it alone, or only 
sustain and improve it so as to preserve it invio- 
late, as the Constitution of the United States and 
those of most of the States require. 

You will readily recall the main incidents of the 
trial of Zola. An army officer belonging to a race 

201 



TEIAL BY JURY 

obnoxious to the hatred and jealousy of the 
French people, accused of an infamous crime, 
hounded by a licentious press, had been tried and 
convicted by a court martial, and after the most 
shameful degradation, had been condemned for 
life to solitary confinement upon a rock in the sea, 
eating out his heart with despair more biting than 
the talons of the vulture or the beak of the eagle. 
He protested his innocence, and scores of the best 
men in France declared their faith in it also, 
among them statesmen and officials of high rank 
and character, and before long it became apparent 
that, whether guilty or innocent, he had been con- 
demned practically unheard, and the Government 
declared that " reasons of State " forbade that 
the truth should be known. 

It was at this point that Zola, the most noto- 
rious at least, if not the most powerful, of 
French writers, with a courage and a chivalry 
never surpassed, took up the unhappy victim's 
cause, proclaimed his innocence, and chal- 
lenged the authorities to bring himself to trial 
for his accusation against the court mar- 
tial, which, as he declared, had covered the ille- 
gality of the conviction of Dreyfus by the judicial 
crime of consciously acquitting the real criminal. 

The government took up the challenge, and then 
followed a trial, which, for reckless and cruel dis- 
regard of every principle of right and justice 
known to us, is surely without a precedent in mod- 
ern history, and yet it purported to be a jury 
trial. A jury was sworn, but apparently its sole 

202 



TRIAL BY JURY 

function was to register the edict of the govern- 
ment, the army and the press, which demanded 
conviction. Of course, the defendant was pre- 
sumed to be guilty until he should prove himself 
to be innocent, but every effort of himself and his 
counsel to elicit the truth was thwarted. A hos- 
tile audience, with which the court room was 
packed, was permitted to cover the accused with 
contumely. " Conspuez Zola! " greeted his en- 
trance. Invective from Court, prosecutor and 
witnesses took the place of evidence and argu- 
ment. There was no right of cross-examination, 
no law of evidence; witnesses who were sum- 
moned defiantly stayed away ; those who came re- 
fused to testify further than they chose, and were 
suffered to harangue the jury for the prisoner 
and against the prisoner, and ' ' retired amid irre- 
pressible applause.' ' Hearsay was the main 
staple of the proceedings. A perfect pandemo- 
nium prevailed throughout the trial, and at the 
end of two weeks, as everybody had known from 
the beginning, the heroic defendant was convicted 
and sentenced, and his principal witnesses were 
degraded or dismissed from the public services.* 
However satisfactory such a method of admin- 
istering criminal justice may be to the French 
people, who cling to it through all changes of gov- 
ernment, it could not but excite horror and dis- 
gust throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. The 
proceedings were read wherever Zola's fascin- 

* ' < Zola, Dreyfus, and the Bepublic, " by F. W. Whitbridge : 
Political Science Quarterly, June, 1898, page 159. 

203 



TEIAL BY JURY 

ating romances had preceded them. Every safe- 
guard of personal liberty enjoyed in England and 
America for two centuries had been violated. We 
could not read the account of the trial without 
contrasting it with our own trial by jury, or with- 
out the pious utterance from every lip, " Thank 
God! I am an American." 

Heroic Zola ! It is pleasant to think of him en- 
joying the free air of Switzerland after all, having 
taken French leave of his country, instead of rot- 
ting in the dungeon to which her despotism under 
a republican mask would have consigned him. 

This signal event, so shocking to our sense of 
justice and right, has done more, I am happy to 
believe, than whole volumes of argument to 
strengthen and perpetuate our faith in our wholly 
different system of procedure for the ascertain- 
ment of facts on which life, liberty or property 
are to be brought in judgment. It will help to pre- 
serve in its integrity our precious trial by jury, 
by which no man can be deprived of life or liberty 
by the sentence of a court until his guilt has been 
proved beyond all reasonable doubt to the unani- 
mous satisfaction of twelve of his fellow citizens, 
and no man can lose reputation or property by 
judgment of a court, until by a clear preponder- 
ance of evidence his right to it has been disproved 
before a similar tribunal. 

I do not appeal to mere sentiment or popular 
prejudice in defence of this, which I believe to be 
the best method yet devised for the determination 
of disputed questions of fact in the administra- 

204 



TKIAL BY JUEY 

tion of justice. There is no need of such appeals 
— and if I were weak enough to resort to them, 
they would be wasted upon an assemblage of law- 
yers like this. 

The truth is, however, that the jury system is so 
fixed as an essential part of our political institu- 
tions ; it has proved itself to be such an invaluable 
security for the enjoyment of life, liberty and 
property for so many centuries; it is so justly 
appreciated as the best and perhaps the only 
known means of admitting the people to a share, 
and maintaining their wholesome interest in the 
administration of justice ; it is such an indispens- 
able factor in educating them in their personal 
and civil rights ; it affords such a school and train- 
ing in the law to the profession itself; and is so 
imbedded in our Constitutions, which, as I have 
said, declare that it shall remain forever invio- 
late, requiring a convention or an amendment to 
alter it — that there can be no substantial ground 
for fear that any of us will live to see the people 
consent to give it up. 

For the trial of persons charged with crimes, I 
do not believe that any material alteration of its 
character will ever be adopted. It is so much 
better that ten guilty men should escape than 
that one innocent man should suffer. In truth, in 
these days of multiplied statutory crimes and mis- 
demeanors, a large majority of guilty men do 
escape by not being found out, by not being ac- 
cused, by not being brought to trial after indict- 
ment, and largely, too, by setting aside the ver- 

205 



TRIAL BY JURY 

diet by Courts of Appeals, so that our established 
public policy seems to lean against any harsh or 
rigid or arbitrary application of the criminal 
laws. 

But accepting, as we must, the rule that the de- 
fendant 's guilt must be established beyond all 
reasonable doubt before he can be convicted, it is 
hard to see how, as long as three, or two, or one 
honest man on the jury has a reasonable doubt, 
the prisoner can justly be deprived of the benefit 
of it without destroying our cardinal rule. But 
the insuperable answer to any change so far as 
criminal trials are concerned, is the question what 
substitute will you provide — and none has ever 
been suggested that would command the approval 
of lawyers or of laymen. 

Let me call your attention to two cases in the 
Court of Appeals in New York, which will illus- 
trate the necessity of the absolute inviolability of 
the jury in criminal cases for which I contend, 
one of long standing, and one just announced, both 
of which resulted in the reversal of convictions 
for murder, and which must, as I believe, com- 
mend themselves to general approval. In the cele- 
brated Cancemi case,* a juror being taken ill and 
unable to go on with the trial, the Government 
and the prisoner's counsel in his presence con- 
sented that the case should go on to a verdict with 
the remaining eleven jurors, and the defendant 
was convicted — but the Court reversed, upon the 
ground that a jury of eleven was a tribunal for 

* People vs. Cancemi, 18 N. Y. 128. 

206 



TRIAL BY JURY 

the trial of felony unknown to the common law, 
and that it was too dangerous a precedent to estab- 
lish. It held that the public had a vital and in- 
alienable interest in the preservation intact of 
this constitutional tribunal, which it had created 
for the trial of crimes — that if the prisoner could 
waive one juror he could waive eleven, and create 
a tribunal of his own ; and then, how could a man 
on trial for his life be competent to determine on 
the sudden as to the wisdom or safety of going on 
with a juror lost, and who else could be empow- 
ered to decide for him? The other was the Shel- 
don case,* decided but yesterday, where the trial 
judge kept the jury out eighty-four hours and so 
compelled a conviction, and the Court of Appeals 
reversed on the ground that the prisoner was 
convicted by force and not by reason or evidence ; 
a result which all the world must approve. 

There is one serious infirmity in trial by jury 
in criminal cases in times of great excitement, 
especially when the more boisterous portion of 
the press undertakes, as it generally does, to pre- 
judge the case and to condemn the accused un- 
heard. The jury, under such circumstances, find 
it hard to resist the impression of public senti- 
ment so loudly proclaimed. The courage and 
firmness which stood as an effectual barrier 
against the wrath and tyranny of kings, and which 
won for the petit jury so much of its prestige and 
glory in English history, are certainly likely at 
times to fail, when confronting the outraged sen- 

* People vs. Sheldon, 156 N. Y. 268. 
207 



TEIAL BY JURY 

timent of that more potent and dangerous despot, 
an enraged democracy. 

Fortunately, such tempests of popular fury 
are very rarely directed against innocence, and 
other tribunals do not withstand their fury 
while the storm lasts, any better than the jury. 
Judges of the first instance, and even the local 
tribunals of appeal, have been found equally 
powerless to stem the tide. Study the reports 
of our own Court of Appeals in recent years, 
and you will find more than one instance of pub- 
lic wrath in our great metropolis, fanned into 
a devouring flame by some lawless newspapers 
and a somewhat lawless investigating commit- 
tee, where the trial Court, unconsciously in- 
fluenced and loudly sustained by public opinion, 
committed fatal errors against the prisoner, which 
were confirmed by the local tribunal of appeal, 
and it was only when the storm had passed and 
the atmosphere cooled, that the Court of last re- 
sort, sitting in the remote capital, corrected the 
error, and each time with the unfortunate result 
than an apparently guilty prisoner, who had been 
convicted upon illegal evidence or rulings, escaped 
altogether. 

One other charge against trial by jury in crimi- 
nal cases is the possibility of corruption and brib- 
ery of individual jurors. But in my judgment, 
the common estimate of the extent of this danger 
is greatly exaggerated. There are but a few well 
authenticated cases of such crimes in the jury 
box. I have had little to do with the trial of 

208 



TRIAL BY JURY 

criminal cases, but in an experience of more than 
forty years in the trial of civil cases before juries, 
I cannot recall one case where I had reason to 
believe that corruption or bribery had reached a 
single juror. And if you can show me a few 
authentic cases of such infamy in the jury box, 
I will undertake to match them with an equal 
number of similar crimes committed by judges 
who have been properly exposed and punished. 

No ! with all its defects and faults, which can- 
not be denied or disguised, there is no danger of 
trial by jury in criminal cases being supplanted 
in the confidence of the American people — nor has 
any possible substitute for it ever been seriously 
suggested. 

It is for the integrity, efficiency and utility of 
trial by jury in civil causes that I am chiefly con- 
cerned, and would most earnestly plead to-day 
with my professional brethren, who are naturally 
responsible for public sentiment on such a subject. 
For I cherish, as the result of a life's work near- 
ing its end, that the old-fashioned trial by a jury 
of twelve honest and intelligent citizens remains 
to-day, all suggested innovations and amend- 
ments to the contrary, the best and safest practi- 
cal method for the determination of facts as the 
basis of judgment of courts, and that all attempts 
to tinker or tamper with it should be discouraged 
as disastrous to the public welfare. 

You may say that I am contending for an ideal 
tribunal. On the contrary, I speak for what is not 
only possibly, but actually within the reach of 

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TRIAL BY JURY 

every State and every community — ideal only for 
the purpose designed, as when we say that a par- 
ticular man would make an ideal judge, an ideal 
senator, or an ideal general. 

Let me say what I understand by a jury trial ; 
that picturesque, dramatic and very human trans- 
action, that arena on which has been fought the 
great battle of liberty against tyranny, of right 
against wrong, of suitor against suitor; — that 
school which has always been open for the in- 
struction and entertainment of the common peo- 
ple of England and America, that nursery, that 
common school of lawyers and judges, which has 
had five times more pupils than all the law schools 
and Inns of Court combined — for there are ninety 
thousand lawyers in America, of whom four-fifths 
probably never saw the inside of a law school. 

Well, the first and most essential element in a 
jury trial is a wise, learned, impartial and compe- 
tent judge — a judge qualified by his character, 
learning and experience, to preside over and con- 
trol the proceedings, and to advise the jury as to 
the discharge of their duties. Add to the ordinary 
modicum of legal learning, courage, honesty and 
common sense, and you have the kind of a judge 
I mean. If we say that an adequate supply of 
such judges, possessed of these ordinary qualities 
of manhood cannot be found, we libel our own 
profession, we befoul our own nest wherein they 
are bred. Of course, they cannot be had, if we 
apply to judicial nominations our favorite demo- 
cratic idea that one man is as good as another for 

210 



TRIAL BY JURY 

any office ; of course they cannot be had if selected 
for partisan services; of course they cannot be 
had if appointed by a boss, or if they are required 
or allowed to pay for their nominations, directly 
or indirectly; but they can be had if selected on 
their merits from the gladiators in this same 
arena, as England has selected her judges since 
1688, always with assured success. They must be 
had, if our institutions are to be preserved. 

And then there are the twelve honest and intel- 
ligent jurors, drawn from the body of the com- 
munity, sworn to pass upon the issue, and to re- 
turn whence they came when their task is done. 
If we say that the average citizen is not equal to 
the duty, we belie our American manhood, we con- 
tradict the whole course of judicial history, and 
we fail of our duty to the communities of which 
we form a part, which rely upon us implicitly for 
the legislative machinery by which juries are to 
be secured. 

And then you must have the earnest and loyal 
advocates, sworn to do their whole duty; which 
means to employ all their powers and attain- 
ments, and to use their utmost skill and elo- 
quence, in exhibiting the merits each of his own 
side of the case. In doing so, as Mr. Justice Cur- 
tis well said, the advocate only does his duty, and 
if the adversary does his, the administration of 
justice is secured. I omit not the indispensable 
presence of the public, an ever essential feature 
in this great historic forum, for justice, though 
blind to the parties and to everything but the 

211 



TRIAL BY JURY 

merits of the case, must never be secret. It is the 
sacred possession of the people in whose name 
and by whose authority it is done. 

Do you say again that this is an ideal pic- 
ture? Who of you has not seen it? Who of 
you does not know that it is not only possible, 
but can be and ought to be the actual and every 
day scene in our Courts? I well remember wit- 
nessing such an administration of justice by 
Chief Justice Shaw and his associates in the 
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, aided 
uniformly by juries representing the best citizen- 
ship of that grand old State, and by a 
group of advocates whose superiors the world 
has never known, disposing of great causes in the 
presence of a bar instructed, and of a public edu- 
cated, by the noble spectacle. I have witnessed 
the same scene in the city of New York, under the 
administration of Chief Justice Oakley and Judge 
Duer and their associates, and coming down from 
those early days to the present, I have seen it a 
hundred times since, down to the last term of 
our Federal Court, when I saw an important and 
intricate cause disposed of by as good a jury as 
ever sat, under the guidance of a faithful and com- 
petent judge. 

Are we willing to admit that the Bench, the Bar, 
the intelligence of the community from which the 
average juror is drawn, have so degenerated in 
the last fifty years, or in our generation, that this 
great tribunal, which has commanded the confi- 
dence and approval of all English speaking people 

212 



TRIAL BY JURY 

for centuries, is no longer adequate for our pub- 
lic needs? For one, I refuse to believe that. I 
know that the Bar of to-day is adequate for the 
duties of to-day — that it can furnish material for 
the bench worthy of the great service of justice. 
And I feel quite sure that the average standard, 
not only of morals but of intelligence in our 
American communities which furnish our supply 
of jurors, has not receded, but has actually ad- 
vanced in the last half century. 

This trial by jury for which I stand, is not only 
ancient as magistracy, rich in the traditions of 
freedom and of justice, glorified by the prestige 
and the prowess of all the great advocates of our 
race, but it is the proudest and most delightful 
privilege of our whole professional life. It alone 
atones for and mitigates all the drudgery and 
painful labor of the rest of our professional work. 
Here alone we feel the real joy of the contest, that 
gaudium certaminis, which is the true inspiration 
of advocacy. Here alone occur those sudden and 
unexpected conflicts of reason, of wit, of nerve, 
with our adversaries, with the judge, with the wit- 
nesses; those constant surprises, equal to the 
most startling in comedy or tragedy. Here alone 
is our one entertainment, in the confinement for 
life to hard labor, to which our choice of profes- 
sion has sentenced us, and here alone do the 
people enter into our labors and lend their coun- 
tenance to our struggles and triumphs. Sorry, 
indeed, for our profession will be the day when 
this best and brightest and most delightful func- 

213 



TEIAL BY JURY 

tion, which calls into play the highest qualities of 
heart, of intellect, of will and of courage, shall 
cease to excite and to feed our ambition, our sym- 
pathy and our loyalty. 

Let me now consider the principal evils and 
mischiefs incident to and perhaps inseparable 
from this much prized trial by jury, for which all 
sorts of nostrums and legislative innovations have 
been suggested as radical cures. The existence 
of some cannot be denied, but I am persuaded that 
the force and effect of each of them has been 
grossly exaggerated, and that they can all be 
remedied, not by any material alteration, but by 
a better administration of the system as it now 
exists in our Federal courts, and in the vast ma- 
jority of States whose constitutions still require 
that it shall be preserved inviolate. 

And first and most common is the complaint of 
the rule of unanimity, which requires the entire 
votes of the twelve to render a verdict. To listen 
to the impassioned arguments of those who seek 
to destroy this ancient and time-honored rule of 
unanimity, you would think that in almost every 
jury impanelled there is among the twelve one 
Judas ready to betray the cause of justice, or one 
crooked stick which by no amount of application 
can be made to fit in with the rest. But, in truth, 
the discharge of a jury because they are unable 
to come to an agreement, and the consequent ne- 
cessity of a new trial is a comparatively infre- 
quent event. 

So far as the imperfect statistics which I have 
214 



TRIAL BY JURY 

been able to gather show, only about three or at 
most four per cent, of all jury trials end in a dis- 
agreement. 

There is a certain percentage of cases so doubt- 
ful and so difficult, that the disagreement of the 
jury, instead of being a disaster, is a positive 
good, as leading the parties to such a compromise 
as they ought to have made before carrying the 
case into Court — or if that fails, in giving an 
opportunity for new light and re-consideration. 
Take, for instance, the Sheldon case, to which I 
have already alluded — to be sure it was a crimi- 
nal case, but the same considerations will apply 
in this respect to a civil case — how much better 
it would have been for the cause of justice and the 
spirit of truth, if, instead of making the decision 
the result of a contest of physical endurance 
among the twelve, they had been discharged after 
a reasonable number of hours and a new jury en- 
trusted with the case. A new jury can always be 
impanelled at the next term, and no great delay 
is involved. 

Again, where very great amounts are involved 
and the contest is extremely close — and these are 
the cases, I think, in which the largest percentage 
of disagreements occur, a second trial is not an 
unmixed evil — a second trial is better than a 
wrong decision. The truth is discoverable, of 
course, in every case, but how often on the first 
trial in such cases is some evidence omitted or 
misunderstood, from lack of preparation or of 
knowledge — which, being cleared up on a second 

215 



TRIAL BY JURY 

trial, makes the truth more obvious and dis- 
cernible. 

So clearly is this recognized in the public policy 
of the State of New York, as embodied in its 
statutes, that in actions for the recovery of title 
to land, so apprehensive are the State and the 
law, of accident, or surprise, or negligence, or 
lack of knowledge of evidence, that even after one 
full trial and verdict rendered, either party may 
have the verdict vacated and a new trial, as mat- 
ter of right, on payment of costs. So jealously 
is the right guarded, and so much better is it 
deemed, both for the parties and the public, that 
there should be a right decision than a quick de- 
cision. 

Again, if I may rely upon my own experience 
and observation, the disagreement when it does 
happen is quite as likely to be the fault of the 
judge as of the jury. The failure of the judge 
to perform his most important duty, to explain 
to the jury the proper legal bearing of the evi- 
dence upon the issues of fact which it is their sole 
province to decide, is the most frequent cause of 
disagreement. It sends the jury in an intricate 
case to their consultation room without a proper 
understanding of the questions submitted to 
them. Some judges at nisi prius are lazy, and 
some don't care what the verdict is to be, and 
some care too much; and the least appearance of 
partiality in the judge is apt to awaken the jeal- 
ousy and resentment of some more or less intelli- 
gent juryman. Juries are, as a rule, extremely 

216 



TEIAL BY JUEY 

jealous of their province of deciding the facts, and 
anything like invasion of it by the judge very 
properly tends to excite their alarm. Perhaps I 
may cite an actual case in my own experience, 
which I tried twice. Each time the jury dis- 
agreed, necessitating a third trial. Both dis- 
agreements were directly traceable to the clear 
manifestation of pressure or bias on the part of 
the judge. It was a speculative case for damages. 
The tort was plain enough, and the question was 
how much damages. On the first trial the judge 
charged so strongly for the plaintiff, and on the 
second trial another judge charged so strongly 
for the defendant, that in both cases the jury, 
instead of taking an average verdict, as is the 
only way in such cases to reach a verdict at all, 
revolted and disagreed. 

This leads me to say that the vast majority of 
cases brought to trial before juries are cases 
where the principal, if not the only question to be 
determined by them, is the amount of unliquida- 
ted damages ; and for the decision of such a ques- 
tion there can be no reasonable doubt that the 
average of the estimates of twelve sensible lay- 
men is far safer, and far more likely to approxi- 
mate to the just estimate, than the assessment of 
one man, however learned and instructed in legal 
questions he may be. There is something in the 
technical training and habit of mind of the judge, 
that tends really to unfit him to pass alone upon 
such a question ; and for his caprice, his prejudice, 
his error of judgment, there is no check or balance 

217 



TRIAL BY JURY 

and no cure ; and so long as the power of the judge 
who tries the case to reduce the verdict for mani- 
fest excess, or to set it aside for manifest insuf- 
ficiency, is reasonably exercised, any practical 
danger of injustice is eliminated. 

So let me say, and again upon the same author- 
ity of personal experience and observation, that 
for the determination of the vast majority of 
questions of fact arising upon conflict of evidence, 
the united judgment of twelve honest and intelli- 
gent laymen, properly instructed by a wise and 
impartial judge, who expresses no opinion upon 
the fact, is far safer and more likely to be right 
than the sole judgment of the "same judge would 
be. There is nothing in the scientific and techni- 
cal training of such a judge that gives to his 
judgment upon such questions superior virtue or 
value, and we cannot be too frequently reminded 
of the valuable opinion on this point, of one of our 
clearest and broadest minded judges, Mr. Justice 
Miller, given as the deliberate result of a quarter 
of a century's experience in the chief court of 
the nation.* 

" It is of the highest importance," he says, 
' 1 that in a jury trial the judge should clearly and 
decisively state the law, which is his peculiar 
province, and point out to the jury with equal 
precision the disputed questions of fact arising 
upon the evidence, which it is the duty of that 

* " The System of Trial by Jury/' Samuel F. Miller; 21 Am. 
Law Eev. 859. 

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TEIAL BY JURY 

body to decide. Without this a jury trial is a 
farce. 

" An experience of twenty-five years on the 
bench, and an observation during that time of 
cases which came from all the courts of the United 
States for review, as well as of cases tried before 
me at nisi prius, have satisfied me that when the 
principles above stated are faithfully applied by 
the Court in a jury trial, and the jury is a fair 
one; as a method of ascertaining the truth in 
regard to disputed questions of fact, a jury is in 
the main as valuable as an equal number of judges 
would be, or any less number. And I must say, 
that in my experience in the conference room of 
the Supreme Court of the United States, which 
consists of nine judges, I have been surprised to 
find how readily those judges came to an agree- 
ment on questions of law, and how often they dis- 
agreed upon questions of fact, which apparently 
were as clear as the law." 

But the great objection to dispensing with the 
rule of unanimity, and requiring the decision of 
a majority or of two-thirds or three-quarters of 
the jury to control, is the certain danger of hasty 
and therefore of unjust or extravagant verdicts. 
It is not to be forgotten that with every verdict 
when carried into judgment property passes, or 
claims to money or property are determined. The 
rule so long insisted upon by the English and 
American people, that the right to the property 
or money in question shall not pass until the 
whole jury is satisfied, by the clear preponder- 

219 



TRIAL BY JURY 

ance of evidence, that it ought to pass, is not too 
great a security by which the sacred right of 
property ought to be held. The right of property, 
as Mr. Webster said at Plymouth in 1820, is the 
corner stone of civil society, and its sanctity can- 
not be safely invaded or impaired. 

The secrets of the jury room generally leak out 
after they are discharged, and it very rarely hap- 
pens that a majority, and seldom that two-thirds 
or even three-quarters, are not united on the first 
ballot, and if you make their vote decisive you 
will have a hasty verdict; while experience has 
often shown that intelligent discussion in the jury 
room is just as effective as it is anywhere else, 
and often results in converting the majority to 
the real truth. The prejudice of juries, so far 
as it affects their conduct, is always and natu- 
rally for the weak against the strong, for the poor 
against the rich, for the individual against the 
corporation, and it sometimes sways the whole 
to the very verge and even beyond the verge of 
injustice. And if you break down the barrier 
which lies in the rule of unanimity, and which has 
heretofore for ages been the only sufficient safe- 
guard of property, you will be likely to cause a 
great deal more injustice than you will cure by 
such a change. Imagine a jury roused to even 
just indignation by the oppression, or miscon- 
duct of a rich individual or gigantic corporation 
against an unfortunate plaintiff, and not re- 
strained by the cooler sense and judgment of the 
three or four most conservative or intelligent of 

220 



TRIAL BY JURY 

their number, and you can easily foresee what 
havoc they would make with the rights of property. 

It takes no prophet to foretell that the great 
contests in the courts in the coming generation 
are to be against and in defence of the right of 
property, and I can conceive of no more destruc- 
tive and fatal weapon, which its adversaries could 
secure in advance, than the abolition of this rule 
of unanimity, excluding practically the votes of 
the more conservative, the more deliberate, the 
more just members of the tribunal. 

Coming down then to the isolated instances 
where juries disagree by the dissent of one from 
the decision of the eleven, whether the one be a 
crank or, as sometimes happens, the only man 
who is right, I submit that the cases of such dis- 
agreement are very rare indeed, not one per cent, 
of jury trials, and present no good reason for a 
change in the rule which, in the general, has 
worked well in the whole history of our litiga- 
tion. I decline to discuss the question of bribery 
and corruption in this connection, for its occur- 
rence is so nearly infinitesimal that I do not be- 
lieve in its existence. 

Nor do I overlook the fact that learned essay- 
ists and philosophers without number, who prob- 
ably never sat upon a jury or participated in the 
trial of a cause, headed by Bentham, who failed 
as a lawyer and hated all form of litigation, and 
had a special aversion to Blackstone, have de- 
cried the rule of unanimity. On such a question 
better fifty years of experience than a whole 

221 



TRIAL BY JURY 

cycle of theories. And I treat with equal indif- 
ference that constant torrent of declamation from 
the periodical and the newspaper press, which 
declares that the effect of the rule of unanimity 
is to create popular discontent, and to bring the 
administration of justice into contempt. I be- 
lieve that the great mass of the people, whose 
rights and interests are herein chiefly involved, 
are satisfied with the rule as it now stands, and 
cannot and ought not to be argued out of it. 

But I do not forget that certain judges of the 
very highest repute, to whom we owe all defer- 
ence and honor — Mr. Justice Miller among them 
—have declared themselves in favor of some de- 
parture from the ancient rule of unanimity— and 
that a report was once made to this Association, 
by a majority of its standing Committee on Ju- 
dicial Administration and Remedial Procedure 
in favor of such a change— that by the consti- 
tutions of three or four states which include less 
than ten per cent, of our people, a verdict by nine 
of the jury has been directly provided for— and 
that by those of four or five other states, indirect 
provision in the same direction has been made, 
by authorizing the legislature, under prescribed 
limitations, to enact laws to the same effect —and 
that in Scotland, a verdict by three-quarters of 
the jury has long been permitted. 

But it is fair, I think, to say, that the judges 
referred to, however eminent, represent but an 
infinitely small proportion of judicial opinion on 
the subject, that their suggestions on this point 

222 



TRIAL BY JURY 

were rather obiter dicta, without any statement 
of reasons, and that they had for the most part 
been long removed in appellate tribunals from 
direct touch with nisi prius affairs ; — that the re- 
port of your committee referred to, after a very 
brief discussion, was consigned to an oblivion 
from which it has never emerged— that the few 
States which have by their constitutions made the 
direct change, adopted it under social conditions 
differing somewhat from those of the older states 
that maintain the old rule; — that although in 
those states the new method is said by some to 
work well, there is no evidence that anywhere it 
works on the whole any better than the old rule; 
— that the legislatures which have received con- 
stitutional permission to make such change have, 
as I understand, hitherto wisely refrained from 
making it; — and that as to Scotland, her whole 
system of judicial administration is peculiar, and 
that her course in this regard, however satisfac- 
tory to her own people, has never suggested to 
the English people or government the idea of fol- 
lowing her example. 

Upon the whole, the English people and ours 
maintain sound and wholesome views on this im- 
portant subject, which ought not to be disturbed, 
especially in these times, when the aggressive 
ranks of socialism and populism are disposed to 
strike at the right of property, the foundation of 
civilized society, and would naturally seek to con- 
vert the jury box into a weapon of offense. 

The next formidable charge against the com- 
223 



TRIAL BY JURY 

mon law trial by jury is to accuse it of a great 
share in the law's delay. But I deny the charge 
absolutely and altogether. There is nothing in 
the whole realm of litigation so short, sharp and 
decisive as the ordinary jury trial. From the 
first moment when the impanelling of the jury be- 
gins, down to the last when the verdict is re- 
corded, there is no pause or interruption except 
such as the natural wants of those concerned, for 
food and rest and sleep require. It would not be 
possible to devise a mode of trial which in its act- 
ual operation would more absolutely preclude de- 
lay. As, compared with the abominable system 
of references which is the practical substitute for 
it, a trial by jury is like the lightning's flash. 
These references hang on for months and gener- 
ally for years; they wear out the life blood of 
the parties, and pile up an accumulated mass of 
expense for the fees of lawyers, referees and 
stenographers, fatal to the patience and endur- 
ance of clients. Why, I have one in my hands to- 
day which began in September, 1864, has sur- 
vived both parties, all the witnesses, and a long 
succession of referees, and will still live on to be 
buried with the surviving counsel. 

In these days too, when in trial by the judge 
without a jury, written and printed briefs are to 
be submitted after the oral argument, indefinite 
delays ensue. 

No, the charge of delay against juries and jury 
trials is wholly without foundation. 

But there are most grievous delays between 
224 



TRIAL BY JURY 

the joining of issue of fact and the opportunity 
to try the case before a jury, and further grievous 
delays between a just and righteous verdict and 
the realization of the money or property repre- 
sented by it— delays at both ends, for which the 
jury are in no wise responsible, and which are 
the direct result of vicious legal machinery, capa- 
ble in a large degree of alleviation and cure. It 
is to these that I bespeak your most careful at- 
tention; for here, as it seems to me, this associa- 
tion owes a duty to the profession and to the 
community the constant performance of which 
it ought not to shirk. 

These codes of procedure, which have taken the 
place of a simple practice regulated by rules of 
court, have become so cumbrous and impossible; 
— they afford and create such opportunities for 
delay; — they provide for and contemplate such 
countless preliminary motions, each a litigation in 
itself ; — that there seems no way out but to cut the 
Gordian knot and return to the ancient practice. 
Take our own New York Code alone, the degener- 
ate mother of so many illegitimate offspring. It 
has grown to a monster of more than 3,600 sec- 
tions, each section pregnant with some procedure 
■ — and while, unhappily, in our City, it takes 
nearly two years, except in preferred cases, to 
reach a jury case for trial, every intervening week 
from the day of its commencement may be filled 
with a distinct and separate motion. Surely this 
fruitful source of delay could be and ought to be 
cut up by the roots. 

225 



TRIAL BY JURY 

The long waiting for a jury case to be reached 
on the calendar is in many cases a denial of jus- 
tice. If ten jury terms constantly at work, for 
instance in our City, are not enough to keep the 
calendar down, twenty ought to be assigned to 
sit until the docket is cleared. 

The avoidable delays subsequent to appeal, 
waiting for years for the appeal from judgment 
on the jury's verdict to be heard and disposed 
of, ought also to be remedied and prevented for 
the future. Of course my experience is mostly 
confined to the New York courts, but there it 
does now take nearly three years from verdict to 
final judgment in the Court of Appeals, making 
Rve years from commencement of suit to the re- 
covery of one's just dues by suit, and all this de- 
lay—not an hour of it chargeable to the jury- 
avoidable and therefore inexcusable. 

It is very clear now that we made a great mis- 
take in the Constitutional Convention of 1894 
in revising the judiciary article, in not re- 
taining the clause which provided for the 
appointment of a special commission when neces- 
sary for clearing off all arrears of appeals. No 
wonder that suitors tire and resort to set- 
tlements, arbitrations, and board committees for 
a prompt and speedy adjustment of their 
controversies. Such a result, however brought 
about, is a direct benefit, for litigation is a posi- 
tive evil. But for the thousands upon thousands, 
the vast majority of suitors in every community 
who remain and claim their rights in the 

226 



TRIAL BY JURY 

courts, these intolerable grievances by delay 
ought to be remedied, so that the administration 
of justice may not be brought into contempt, 
and this unjust and wholly undeserved stigma, 
falsely imputed to trial by jury, be forever re- 
moved. 

There is one other serious evil after verdict 
which the common sense and sound judgment of 
our judicial brethren might and should reduce, 
if they cannot altogether remove it without new 
legislation. I mean the granting of new trials for 
trivial and unsubstantial errors, in the charge 
of the trial judge, or in the admission or rejection 
of evidence. Where, for such errors which do 
not go to the root of the action or defence, a new 
trial is granted, I think that your universal ex- 
perience will testify that a second jury, in at 
least twenty-nine cases out of thirty, finds the 
same verdict over again— making the whole pro- 
cedure between the two verdicts a total loss of 
time, expense and labor. And so, as the judges 
should exercise a liberal discretion in reducing 
excessive verdicts in cases of unliquidated dam- 
ages, they should exercise a like discretion in 
other cases, and never grant a new trial, even for 
manifest errors, where it is clear that no posi- 
tive harm has resulted and substantial justice 
been done. 

Review by appeal is only designed for par- 
ties really aggrieved, and in jurisdictions where 
full power to this extent does not already rest 
in the courts, it ought to be provided. Juries 

227 



TRIAL BY JURY 

are naturally jealous of any interference by the 
Courts with their exclusive domain, and their will 
must finally prevail upon the facts. In the cele- 
brated case of Shaw vs. Boston & Worcester R. 
R. Co.,* the Supreme Court of Massachusetts set 
aside the first verdict of $10,000 for error. The 
second jury gave $18,000 and the Court set it 
aside on the same ground again. The third jury 
gave $22,500, and then the Court denied the mo- 
tion to set it aside as excessive, but gave up the 
unequal contest and let it stand. 

The only other important defect attributed to 
the trial by jury as conducted from time imme- 
morial, is the too prevalent notion that it per- 
mits to the trial judge too great a power in con- 
ducting the trial and guiding the deliberations of 
the jury. And so jealous have the people in some 
of the States become of such imputed interference 
of the judges with the functions of the jury, that 
in several States, instead of taking measures to 
improve their breed of judges, statutory contri- 
vances have been devised to curtail and impair 
what seems to me to be the necessary function of 
the court, as an inherent part of the tribunal, 
without which its duties cannot be well and prop- 
erly performed, whereby frequent failure of jus- 
tice must eventually result. 

As an illustration of these devices the New 
York Legislature at its last session was asked 
to pass a bill, said to be a literal copy of recent 
enactments of other States providing not only 

* Gray 45. 

228 



TRIAL BY JURY 

that the judge in charging the jury shall only in- 
struct them as to the law of the case, but also 
that no judge shall instruct the jury in any case 
unless such instructions are reduced to writing, 
and that a charge once made shall not be modified 
— and various other similar devices for shorten- 
ing the arm of the court in jury trials have been 
proposed and occasionally enacted. 

I can conceive of nothing better adapted than 
all such devices for mutilating and emasculating 
trial by jury, marring its symmetry, and destroy- 
ing its utility as the best means of ascertaining 
the truth of the facts for judgment. That they 
are an unconstitutional invasion of the rights of 
the court and the people, in a State whose con- 
stitution like that of New York provides that 
trial by jury, in all cases in which it has been 
heretofore used, shall remain inviolate forever, 
may be claimed with great force and probable 
success. They seem to be clear and palpable en- 
croachments by the legislature upon the judiciary 
department, as was well explained by Mr. Jus- 
tice Brown in the admirable paper read by him 
before this Association in 1889, and by Mr. Jus- 
tice Field in the judicial opinion which he cited. 

But aside from that, my objection is that they 
tend to disable and impair the jury itself, so far 
as they tend to deprive it of the rightful and nec- 
essary aid and assistance of the court. If the 
first provision merely means that the court shall 
not attempt to thrust upon the jury its opinion on 
the questions of fact, it was wholly unnecessary— 

229 



TBIAL BY JUKY 

it always was the law— and no self-respecting 
judge ever would or did interfere with that ex- 
clusive province of the jury. But as I. under- 
stand, as generally construed and applied in 
States where they have been enacted, these provi- 
sions operate to limit the court to the submission 
in writing to the jury of bald propositions of law 
on legal questions in the case, without any com- 
ments or advice upon the relevancy, or applica- 
tion, or relative force of the testimony on the is- 
sues of fact which they are to decide. 

The proper functions of the judge in a jury 
trial were never better expressed than by Lord 
Bacon in his charge to Mr. Justice Hutton in 
handing him his commission to the Court of 
Common Pleas, "That you be a light to jurors to 
open their eyes and not a guide to lead them by 
their noses." And when those great judges to 
whom I have already referred as models in the 
conduct of jury cases, to whom we look for ex- 
ample as young painters look to the old masters, 
Chief Justice Shaw and Chief Justice Oakley, 
charged the jury, having kept in their hands all 
the threads of the evidence from beginning to 
end, whether the trial lasted a day, or a week, or 
a month, they stated clearly to the jury what the 
distinct questions of fact were upon which they 
were to pass. They then proceeded to go over 
the testimony and point out its application to 
those issues, and to instruct the jury by what rule 
and standard they were to measure the relative 
weight and credibility of conflicting pieces of tes- 

230 



TRIAL BY JUEY 

timony, in applying them to the questions to be 
decided by them. And the result was that when 
the judge's charge was finished, the jury under- 
stood the case as they had never realized it till 
then, they understood what questions they had 
to decide, and what material they had for mak- 
ing up their decision. How they should decide 
those questions was their own business, and those 
great judges never presumed to suggest or inter- 
fere; and there is no doubt that that was jury 
trial, according to the uniform course of the com- 
mon law both in England and America. 

But you will say that all our judges are not 
Shaws or Oakleys. Neither were they in those 
days. Those were the great models. The others 
differed in degree rather than in kind, and so 
they do now. But if your judges don't suit you, 
get better ones. Don't remove the ancient land 
marks of the constitution and law, and turn trial 
by jury into a farce. There is no doubt that jury- 
men require such aid and assistance to enable 
them to perform their proper duty, and that 
whatever tends to deprive them of it, in whole or 
in part, to that extent weakens their capacity and 
impairs their usefulness. 

It is impossible for twelve jurymen, laymen of 
average or even of superior intelligence, unac- 
customed to the application of evidence to issues, 
called from their several vocations for the ser- 
vice of the court, however patient and attentive 
they may be, — without aid from the court to carry 
along all the evidence as it falls from the lips of 

231 



TEIAL BY JURY 

witnesses for a week or a month, — to apply each 
piece of testimony to the issues, and pack it away 
in their minds as they go along, — to measure the 
results of cross examination upon the direct tes- 
timony, — to weigh the evidence of the one side 
against that of the other. They are necessarily 
intent for the moment upon each word of testi- 
mony as it drops from the lips of the witnesses. 
In a long trial the general effect of the evidence 
upon their minds is vague and indefinite, their 
memory of details far from clear, the conflicting 
arguments of counsel confusing, and they natu- 
rally look to the judge to be the light, as Lord 
Bacon says, to open their eyes to see their way 
through the labyrinth, and find the clews that 
shall conduct them to the truth. 

Take the Tichborne cases— the civil and the 
criminal trials both— those master-pieces of trial 
by jury, those colossal specimens of adjudication, 
full of great masses of conflicting evidence— the 
lost baronet's own mother had actually recog- 
nized the claimant as her son— the civil trial last- 
ing 103 days and the criminal 188 days, where 
Counsel at the Bar summed up for weeks, and 
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn charged the Jury 
for 18 days, recalling to their minds the whole 
evidence on both sides, and instructing them how 
to apply it to the issues, with the result that the 
Jury, to whom the whole case, without that mar- 
velous charge, would have been a perfect maze, 
were led to the light and the truth. What a farce, 
what an insult to judicial genius, what a re- 

232 



TRIAL BY JURY 

proach to law, what a hindrance to truth and jus- 
tice, if Parliament had said to the jury at the 
close of the evidence and the summing up of 
counsel : ' ' You can have no aid from the Court ! 
all it can do is to hand you written statements of 
propositions of law, upon which you will retire 
and decide the case the best way you can! " 

No, for common assault and battery cases these 
new devices may not stand in the way of Justice, 
but when great and complicated cases arise— as 
they are likely to arise any day, when men's pas- 
sions are excited— when long and complicated 
trials ensue, on which great interests depend, they 
are intolerable stumbling blocks. 

But you will justly ask, is there no defect, no 
drawback, no decadence in this much boasted 
trial by jury? and is there no improvement, no 
remedy which you can suggest as the result of 
forty years experience, as a participant in this 
mode of trial? and you will very properly expect 
from me an answer to these questions. 

Well, I do admit the existence in some degree 
of the very faults which I have been considering, 
but the result of my experience and observation 
has been, that in the general estimate their ex- 
tent is grossly exaggerated. And if you have fol- 
lowed me thus far and read between the lines of 
my address, you have seen that I have no faith 
in the legislative remedies which have been ex- 
perimentally applied, because they tend generally 
to impair the integrity, the efficiency, and the 
utility of this great and time honored tribunal, 

233 



TEIAL BY JURY 

and because they do not propose— there has never 
yet been proposed— any adequate substitute to 
take its place. 

But if you would have jury trial as it has been 
and ought still to be, if you would make it still 
worthy of the high encomiums which have been 
pronounced upon it by great jurists and great 
lawyers since 1688, and worthy of the confidence 
which it still enjoys with the great mass of the 
people, for whose security and safety all courts 
exist ; — if you would transmit it to posterity as a 
heritage from the past improved and not im- 
paired by your keeping; there is an obvious and 
an open way. If you would have trial by jury 
as it has been exhibited in those wholesome and 
impressive instances to which I have referred, 
you must lend your aid to make the component 
parts of the tribunal what they can be and should 
be, and to furnish better jurors, better judges and 
better advocates to conduct the proceeding. 

That the general grade of jurors especially in 
our large cities can be raised to the ideal stan- 
dard there can be no doubt, and generally the 
existing statutes are ample. It is neglect and 
abuse in executing and administering them, neg- 
lect and abuse for which I think the commis- 
sioners, the courts and the bar are largely re- 
sponsible, that bring into the jury box too often 
too much of the refuse of our city directories, 
too much of ignorance and incapacity, and allows 
the men of business, of property and of character 
to escape the arduous and responsible duty. 

234 



TRIAL BY JURY 

What lawyer practising at the bar, what Bar 
Association in any state, has ever taken any pains 
to see to it, that the power of selection entrusted 
to official hands is so exercised as to bring fit 
men to this important service? Have our judges 
taken due care in exercising the power entrusted 
to them to compel the reluctant to serve! Take 
for instance the city of New York with its six 
or seven hundred thousand voters, and its an- 
nual need of ten or twenty thousand jurors, a list 
to be selected by a commissioner appointed for 
the purpose. Will anybody pretend to say, that 
if the duty of selection is properly performed, a 
body of men amply qualified can not be had for 
the service of the State, and ignorance, incapacity 
and low character in all respects excluded from 
the first approach to the jury box? Let me give 
you an illustration which shows what the faithful 
discharge of the duty of selection will accom- 
plish. In the Circuit Court of the United States 
for the Southern District of New York, petit jur- 
ors are selected by the clerk and a designated 
commissioner under the supervision of judges 
who take pride in securing competent jurors. In- 
stead of selecting from the vast list of voters men 
who are not known, as seems to be the too com- 
mon method, they select only those who are 
known for character, for intelligence, for merit 
and fitness, and the result is that a panel of twelve 
for the trial of any case can always be had repre- 
senting the general intelligence of the community 
and even better, and entirely worthy of the 

235 



TRIAL BY JURY 

palmiest days of jury trials. And competent men, 
having been thus selected, must be compelled to 
serve. Too great exemptions are allowed, too 
paltry excuses accepted, and the very men who 
by their weight and character would leaven the 
whole lump escape altogether. 

Jury duty is a great political and public ser- 
vice, as much so as voting or military service, or 
the payment of taxes, and no fit men ought to be 
allowed to escape from the liability to perform 
it. I know how irksome it is— I know how thank- 
less it too often appears to be ; — but if our politi- 
cal institutions are worth saving, if this cardinal 
feature of free and popular government is to be 
preserved and transmitted entire, this peculiar 
form of public service must be performed by citi- 
zens fit for the duty ; voluntarily if they will — but 
by force of compulsion if need be ; — and it is very 
largely in the hands of the Bar and of the courts 
to see to it that this is done. But we mustn't wait 
till our case is called, and a battalion of incom- 
petents lined up for our choice. If we strike at 
the fountain and insist upon the proper selection 
of the lists by the constituted authorities, we 
shall clear the whole stream from pollution, and 
any legislation necessary to that end we ought to 
devise. 

And then I insist that the judge who presides 
in the Court is the keystone of the arch in the 
jury trial, that he must be permitted to have con- 
trol of the proceedings from beginning to end, 
and be indeed a clear light to open the eyes of the 

236 



TRIAL BY JURY 

jurors. The selection of judges lies largely in 
the hands of the bar, whose members generally 
compose by a large majority the judiciary nomin- 
ating conventions of both parties. All that can 
be done— all that ought to be done in each in- 
stance is to select with sole regard to merit and 
fitness, the best man that can be had for the 
judicial seat. I will not insist without regard 
to party— although I think so— but without re- 
gard to the dictation of any party machine or of 
any party despot. 

You may be republicans or you may be demo- 
crats, but you are lawyers and citizens first, and 
you owe this duty at least to your profession and 
your country. By common consent, the American 
people, in all but four of the States, have long ago 
abandoned an appointed judiciary, as inconsistent 
with their theory of republican institutions, and 
have insisted upon the election by the people of 
every judicial officer. But under the system of 
boss rule, the only part the people are permitted 
to take in the selection of judges is simply to 
choose between two candidates, each selected by 
an irresponsible despot, who generally makes his 
choice for personal or party allegiance, with just 
as much and just as little regard to merit and 
fitness as his own partisan necessities require or 
dictate. How long will the bar submit to be the 
instruments of such a power? 

There is one other abuse against which we can 
at least utter an indignant protest. I mean the 
toleration of judicial candidates who are willing 

237 



TRIAL BY JURY 

or permitted to pay for their nomination or to 
pay their party for their election. No matter 
what their personal or professional qualifications 
in other respects may be, such a means of reach- 
ing the office cannot but degrade the Bench. Ima- 
gine John Marshall, or James Kent, or John Jay 
contributing ten thousand dollars or any other 
sum to his party, as a condition precedent to tak- 
ing office! Could it have been said of either of 
them that the judicial ermine touched nothing 
less spotless than itself when it fell upon his 
shoulders ? 

And finally the advocates, the third great fac- 
tor and component of the trial by jury. They at 
least are in your hands, and they must rise or fall 
to the standard which you fix. They are not a 
class set apart, like the English Barristers, by 
special training and office for the work of the 
court room, but are necessarily eliminated by ac- 
cident, by ambition, by personal faculties, for 
this peculiar service. In the long run the doc- 
trine of selection operates. It is necessarily the 
survival of the fittest that groups them by them- 
selves, but the fountain cannot rise higher than 
its source, and their courage, their honesty, their 
training and fitness will always be measured by 
the standard which the Bar at large exemplifies, 
imposes and demands. 

Give us then competent jurors, able judges and 
honest, fearless and learned advocates, and trial 
by jury, which I am sure the people of America 
are determined to maintain, will still be the best 

238 



TEIAL BY JURY 

safeguard of their lives, their liberties and their 
property. 

This Association necessarily looks to the future 
for the results of its annual conferences, and its 
earnest work. Our individual labors are nearly 
finished, but we can do much to clear the field 
for our sons, for the youth who as we hope will 
follow in our footsteps. The best hopes of our 
noble profession have always been, as they al- 
ways will be, in its youngest ranks, and this was 
never so true as at this very moment. The stan- 
dard of legal education has never before been 
advanced to its present height. The young men 
who come annually from the Law Schools to re- 
cruit our ranks, are better equipped and quali- 
fied—far more so than we ever were— to enter 
upon the arduous and responsible duties that 
await them. Let us preserve and restore and 
transmit to them in all its wonted vigor this an- 
cient and noble tribunal— to arouse their am- 
bition, to stimulate their ardor, to stir their elo- 
quence, to seal their devotion, and if in turn they 
prove true to the dreams of their youth— which 
are always of lofty aims and high ideals— our 
jurisprudence will indeed have been advanced. 



239 



RETURN TO AMERICA 



RETURN TO AMERICA 

Address delivered at the banquet of the Pilgrims Society of New 

York, in honor of Mr. Choate's return to America, 

June 9, 1905. 



IT is quite impossible for me to make an ade- 
quate reply to your most affectionate and 
flattering address of welcome. 

Five weeks ago to-night, at the Mansion House, 
in London, I could not express half I felt of grati- 
tude, of friendship, of pain at parting, when, in 
the presence of an assembly truly representative 
of all that is great and good in Great Britain, Mr. 
Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, in behalf of the 
English people, among whom I had lived so long, 
bade me godspeed and farewell. And now, in an 
equally representative assembly of all that I 
honor and love in America, made up, indeed, of 
the men with whom I have summered and win- 
tered for more than forty years, with a sprink- 
ling here and there of young men who have, as it 
were, grown up at my feet and who are very dear 
to me, you, in behalf of my countrymen, give me 
an equally affectionate welcome home. 

If I could feel that I deserved half of the praise 
and benediction lavished upon me on either oc- 
casion I should be so vain that my head would 
strike the stars; but in truth and in deed I do 
not. 

243 



RETURN TO AMERICA 

It was my unique privilege to serve as Ambas- 
sador in two centuries, in two reigns, and under 
two of the most celebrated Presidents of the Uni- 
ted States, and all the time my duties in England 
were very easy, very simple, and extremely pleas- 
ant. Toward my own countrymen who visit Eng- 
land in such increasing number every year, there 
was, of course, but one cardinal rule to follow: 
That the Ambassador represented no party, no 
section, and no social class, but was the equal 
servant of all alike. 

So that whether Mr. Bryan came, who fairly 
represented 6,000,000 of our countrymen, with 
whose political faith I was at variance, or a Re- 
publican ex-President whom I had heartily sup- 
ported, I was at the service of both alike— -to 
bring them in contact with the leading men of 
the nation, and to put the limited resources of 
the Embassy at their command. And I am bound 
to say that in these two instances they were ob- 
jects of equal interest to British statesmen, al- 
though I confess a feeling of disappointment 
when I had taken Mr. Bryan to the Bank of Eng- 
land, and saw him handling gold bullion in its 
famous vaults with apparent zest, to find that it 
seemed to have no effect on his political faith. 

Sometimes indeed the more exacting of my 
countrymen demanded a little more than I could 
do for them; as to breakfast with the King, or to 
stay at Windsor Castle, or to visit private estab- 
lishments, to which I had myself no access, but on 
the whole, they were habitually reasonable, and 

244 



RETURN TO AMERICA 

I found it a great pleasure to minister to the 
wants and convenience of my countrymen as far 
as possible. And the American Society in Lon- 
don, which plays a great part in that city in aid- 
ing distressed and stranded Americans, was al- 
ways a great help to the embassy. 

Then, as to the people of England, I had ex- 
press instructions from President McKinley to 
do all that I could to maintain and promote the 
friendship and good-will that already existed be- 
tween them and our people, and, following the ex- 
ample of my distinguished predecessors, I moved 
freely among them and studied their institutions, 
their customs, and their social life, and from the 
day that I landed until I left, I met with nothing 
but kindness, hospitality, and good-will extended 
freely and cordially to me as the representative 
of my countrymen. 

And I feel sure that almost every man, woman, 
and child in Great Britain is friendly to us, and 
that, as a people, they are determined always to 
be on good terms with the United States. I did 
what I could to make them better acquainted with 
our institutions, our history, and our great men, 
being assured that better acquaintance is all that 
is needed to perfect and perpetuate our mutual 
friendship. They manifested great interest in 
our National heroes, in such men as Washington, 
Franklin, Hamilton, and Lincoln. 

But there is one living American who appeals 
very strongly to their imaginations and is the 
universal subject of interest, curiosity, and ap- 

245 



RETURN TO AMERICA 

plause, and if his name were submitted to their 
suffrages it would command the same overwhelm- 
ing support that it does among his own country- 
man. You will not require me to mention his 
name. 

The history of our diplomatic relations with 
Great Britain in the last six years is familiar to 
you all. Two great and difficult questions which 
threatened to disturb, which did, in fact, disturb 
the perfect harmony which ought always to pre- 
vail, have been forever disposed of and set at 
rest, and there is nothing left of sufficient conse- 
quence to disturb the happy repose of Lord Lans- 
downe and Mr. Hay, who are the responsible au- 
thorities, and entitled to the credit of all that has 
been done. 

Their conduct of our relations which are no 
longer regarded on either side as foreign rela- 
tions, has been on both sides fair, square, and 
aboveboard, frank, honest, and sincere, and it will 
be happy for both countries if the same spirit 
shall continue to animate our official intercourse. 

There is another potent factor at all times ex- 
ercising strong influence for harmonious and cor- 
dial relations between the two countries. I mean 
the happy and earnest influence of his Majesty, 
the King, derived, I am quite certain, from both 
his father and mother, and greatly strengthened 
by his pleasant recollections of his early visit to 
America. 

You will remember that at the time of the Trent 
affair, which brought such tremendous strain up- 

246 



KETURN TO AMERICA 

on our peaceful relations, the Prince Consort, then 
I believe already overtaken by his mortal illness, 
acting of course for and with the Queen, ren- 
dered a great service to both countries and saved 
the situation, by modifying a hostile dispatch 
which had been prepared for transmission to 
America. And I desire to bear witness that on 
every occasion, of which I had knowledge, the 
late illustrious Queen and the present sovereign 
of Great Britain have been steadfast in the faith, 
that any trouble between England and America 
would be a calamity to be avoided by all honor- 
able means, a belief in which both the Presidents 
under whom I have served have fully shared, and 
on which I have always acted. 

So I may sincerely disavow the somewhat lav- 
ish praise which your Chairman has bestowed up- 
on me, in giving me altogether too much credit 
for the happily almost perfect relations which 
now exist between the two nations. They have 
been drawn together by the force of political 
gravitation, their interests are largely the same, 
their principles are identical, their civilization is 
one and the same, and it will be strange indeed 
if, when in pursuit of the same object of com- 
mon interest to both, while each moves in its 
own independent orbit, they do not confer, con- 
cur, and co-operate to bring about the same ends. 

So if you ask me to tell you in a word the re- 
sult of my present knowledge of both countries, 
I would say that each has a vast deal to learn 
from the other; that each has infinite reason to 

247 



RETURN TO AMEEICA 

be proud of its own institutions which it has 
worked out by itself by historical evolution, and 
that each can confer priceless benefits on the other 
and upon the world by constant intercourse and 
hearty cooperation. 

The American Embassy and its successive in- 
cumbents have every reason to be grateful to the 
English Court, Government, and people for their 
constant friendship. There is but one drawback 
to its complete success and perfect prestige, and 
that is the want of a permanent home, the prop- 
erty of its own Government, where the residence 
of the Ambassador shall be fixed and all the 
business of the Embassy be conducted. While 
all of the other great powers who maintain em- 
bassies in London have such permanent homes, 
each its own property, the United States and 
Turkey alone lead a floating and nomadic exist- 
ence; each successive Ambassador hunting for a 
house which shall suit the length of his own per- 
sonal purse. 

I believe that hardly two successive Ministers 
or Ambassadors of the United States in London 
have occupied the same house. They have wan- 
dered from Baker street to Portland place, from 
Cromwell road to Lowndes square, and from 
Eaton square to Carlton House Terrace, and I 
myself had to move from one house to another in 
the midst of my term, because the owner, natu- 
rally enough, wanted to live in his own house. At 
last, however, by the courtesy and sufferance of 
my landlords, the Viceroy of India and the Prime 

248 



RETURN TO AMERICA 

Minister of Great Britain, I found places from 
which to float the Stars and Stripes. But what I 
maintain is that a great Nation like ours, rich, 
powerful, and ambitious, should have a house of 
its own on which to float the National flag on the 
Fourth of July and on all other great days, with- 
out leave or license from Viceroy or Premier or 
anybody else. 

My own position in the matter was graphi- 
cally depicted, after I had been house hunting for 
about a month, by a poem in a newspaper, which 
represented a forlorn and travel-stained stranger 
wandering about the streets of London, always 
hunting, hunting, hunting, but finding nothing. 
At last at midnight the police, having grown sus- 
picious of him, touched him on the shoulder and 
said: " You must move on, Sir; you must go 
home." " Home," said he, " home? I have no 
home; I am the American Ambassador." 

The present arrangement by which our coun- 
try, almost alone among the nations represented 
at London by embassies, goes without a home of 
its own is undemocratic, unrepublican, and unbe- 
coming to the dignity of a great nation. It is un- 
fair to the President, because it limits his choice 
every time. He ought to be able to lay his hand 
upon the shoulder of whomever he considers the 
very best man among our eighty millions to rep- 
resent the nation in each of the capitals of Eu- 
rope, whether he has a dollar of his own or not. 

What we ought to have is a permanent em- 
bassy, spacious in area and simple in character, 

249 



RETURN TO AMERICA 

suitable for the representative of a republic, prop- 
erly equipped and adequate for the purpose, in 
which each successive Ambassador would reside 
as a matter of course, the Nation alone being 
responsible for its dignity and fitness, and I hope 
that all of you who have any political influence 
will urge this modest reform. 



250 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 
IN 1855 

Address delivered before the New England Society in the City of 
New Yorlc, December 22, 1905. 

I THANK you for this cordial greeting. Noth- 
ing that I experienced in England gave me 
more pleasure than this welcome from my old 
friends and companions in this Society which 
is so dear to my heart. I am sorry to find my- 
self for the first time before you so situated that 
I do not feel at liberty to play to the galleries— 
the most absorbing, the most fascinating, the 
most bewitching game that man can play. You 
have only to look into the galleries to see that 
neither bridge, nor golf, nor foot-ball with all its 
drawbacks and halfbacks and quarterbacks, fur- 
nishes any sport so delightful as that. 

I listened very carefully to what your Presi- 
dent in his eloquent and impressive opening ad- 
dress said, and I got one idea from him that bore 
directly upon this subject. He said— and he will 
correct me if I misunderstood him— that the 
whole object and result of the Puritan training 
was to fit us better for companionship with su- 
perior beings. I listened most faithfully to what 
our great President of Harvard said, and he told 
you how much we had improved under collectiv- 

253 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

ism and under individualism, and he hardly knew 
under which the more, and yet, in this respect of 
training for companionship with these superior 
beings, it does not seem to me that we have made 
any progress at all in these two hundred and 
eighty-five years that have elapsed since the land- 
ing on Plymouth Bock. That is, if Longfellow 
rightly tells us the history of the relations of 
John Alden and Priscilla Mullen. 

I am a little sceptical on this question of a 
steady and permanent improvement, upon which 
President Eliot and Mr. Crothers have lavished 
so much earnestness and enthusiasm. That last 
result of scientific culture in Massachusetts that 
Mr. Crothers has told us about— the gypsy moths 
imported first, their destructive work, and then 
the hostile insects that were imported afterwards 
to prey upon them— that was not a new idea at 
all. That is not an advance on New England 
science; it is merely a repetition in another form 
of the story of the triumphant scientific experi- 
ment of the New England farmer one hundred 
and fifty years ago, who crossed his bees with 
fireflies in order that they might work all night. 

To-night I have been recalled here from a re- 
mote past, a veteran who lags superfluous on the 
stage— I believe the only survivor present of 
those who attended the festival of this Society 
fifty years ago. If there is any other gentleman 
who was present on that occasion let him now 
speak. None? Then none have I offended or 
overlooked. When I was in Egypt they showed 

254 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

me the bodies of some prehistoric men who had 
been resting in the sand— not mummies, but peo- 
ple who had been resting in the sand for some- 
where between five and ten thousand years; and 
they had been dug up and brought to the Medi- 
cal Museum for the purpose of teaching the men 
of to-day lessons in anatomy, physiology, archae- 
ology, and human history. And so the President 
has summoned me — and he had a right to, he had 
a right to — because I was actually present and 
he has asked me seriously to tell you some of 
the incidents and details of the celebration of this 
Society fifty years ago — in 1855. 

Well, the circumstances, and especially the 
political circumstances, that surrounded the So- 
ciety and this city at that day must be recalled. 
It was half way between the passage of the com- 
promise measures of 1850, fugitive slave law and 
all, which were believed to have settled the slav- 
ery question forever, and the election of Lincoln 
in 1860, which, as history proved, did settle it for- 
ever. The Kansas-Nebraska bill had just been 
passed, and had shown the utter futility of moral 
means (or immoral means) for putting an end 
to that evil which lay at the very root of the 
honor and the life of the nation. Men's minds 
were divided, distracted. Some clung to the tra- 
ditions of the past and cried, " Peace, peace !" 
when there was no peace, or possibility of peace. 
Some looked to the inevitable and irrepressible 
conflict as the only cure for existing evils, and 
the great majority were still halting between the 

255 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

two opinions, thinking one way one day and the 
other the next. And New York was the neutral 
ground on which it was easy and safe to express 
every form of opinion; but her commerce, her 
destiny as the one great port of the continent, 
pleaded always that there must be no disturbance 
of existing conditions, and, above all, that there 
must be no war. She was then a comparatively 
small city— only 500,000 inhabitants, all living be- 
low Forty-second street— as compared with her 
present expanded area of 330 square miles, I be- 
lieve it is, and four millions of people. There 
were no great fortunes yet in those days. There 
were some rich men— I doubt if any as rich as 
the richest citizen of Cambridge to-day; but they 
were paltry in comparison with the colossal ac- 
cumulations of to-day. Men came here in those 
days to make their fortunes, and not a single 
one had yet appeared of those millionaires, of 
every race and nationality from every part of 
the country, who, having made fortunes else- 
where, now come here to spend them, and who 
have thus changed the whole social life of the 
city. State rights were still largely asserted, and 
pride of State birth was strongly felt and strong- 
ly maintained. That great drift of power and 
authority to Washington, which began with the 
war and which has grown stronger and stronger 
ever since and is growing more rapidly to-day 
than ever, had not yet begun. 

It was in such a situation that the members of 
this Society assembled in 1855 to celebrate the 

256 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

day that is so dear to us. It took two days then 
to celebrate the memory of that little band of 
colonists who now are recognized as the most 
famous ever known in the world. The place se- 
lected for the celebration was Dr. Cheever's 
church on Union Square— on the very spot, I be- 
lieve, where afterwards the golden house of Tif- 
fany was erected— and there came to conduct the 
celebration two great citizens, two great New 
Englanders, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, beloved 
by everybody, and that noble old champion of 
liberty, John Pierpont. There could not by any 
possibility have been selected two men who more 
fitly illustrate the contrast of ideas that then di- 
vided the nation. 

We assembled to hear the orator and poet of 
the evening on the 21st of December. The orator, 
Dr. Holmes, was the best embodiment of New 
England culture and refinement. Tender-hearted 
and unwilling to offend anybody, he delivered 
the most eloquent discourse, in which he spoke 
for harmony between the threatening sections 
of the country, so soon to be divided. He pleaded 
for a closer union between New England and 
the rest of the country, and between the North 
and the South. He deprecated all extreme 
ideas, and one of the themes on which he laid 
most stress would have interested our President, 
General Hubbard, if he had been there; for he 
even denounced the Maine law which had recently 
gone into operation. He spoke for a continuance 
of compromise, and for the strict observance of 

257 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

all constitutional obligations, and although he 
was then, as he always was afterwards, as I think, 
the most popular man in the country, his audi- 
ence was so divided that distinct hisses were 
heard at many of his emphatic periods. 

Dr. Holmes was one of the most loyal and pa- 
triotic of men, and no man was more devoted to 
his country, as the result soon proved; but he 
never could have dreamed, as he stood there 
pleading for harmony between Freedom and 
Slavery, that in less than seven years, immedi- 
ately after the bloody battle of Antietam, a tele- 
gram would arouse him from his slumbers at mid- 
night, telling him that his first-born son, whom 
he had given to the service of his country and 
the cause of liberty, had been shot through the 
neck, but that the wound was not thought to be 
mortal ; that next morning he would have to start 
on that famous search for his captain, i i The Hunt 
for my Captain;" and that after a week's jour- 
ney over hundreds of miles, visiting hospitals 
and camps and railway stations, he should find 
him at last among the wounded in a baggage- 
car entering Hagerstown in Maryland, and should 
exchange those greetings so characteristic of the 
self-contained Bostonian, but which he has made 
so classical and historic. As they came together, 
the father and the son, their first words were: 
" How are you, boy? " " How are you, dad? " 

When Dr. Holmes sat down, then up rose old 
John Pierpont and blew a mighty blast for free- 
dom. Why, you would have thought that his 

258 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

own withers had been wrung by slavery. At any 
rate, the iron of slavery seemed to have entered 
into his soul. I think he must have been in State 
street when Anthony Burns was hurried down 
on his way from the Court House in the hands of 
federal officers and federal troops, to be carried 
back to bondage in the South. 

After Mr. Pierpont had most pathetically 
spoken of the sufferings and troubles of the Pil- 
grim mothers and the Pilgrim fathers, he broke 
out into a splendid apostrophe to the spirit of 
liberty, of which the Pilgrim fathers had been 
the finest exponents in history, and he concluded 
with that stanza which he made historic: 

Oh, thou Holy One, and just, 
Thou who wast the Pilgrims ' trust, 

Thou who watchest o'er their dust 

By the moaning sea ; 
By their conflicts, toils, and cares, 
By their perils and their prayers, 
By their ashes, make their heirs 

True to them and Thee. 

Well, next day came the dinner at the Astor 
House, which compared with this banquet of 
yours to-night very much as that ancient and 
simple hostelry of that day compares with this 
glorious House of Mirth, the Waldorf-Astoria. 

Harmony prevailed there, absolute harmony, in 
spite of all that had happened the night before. 
Dr. Holmes had improved the occasion over night 
to prepare some verses for the reunion and show 

259 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

how little he had been disturbed' by what had 
taken place the evening before. Let me read you 
two or three of his stanzas: 

New England, we love thee ; no time can erase 
From the hearts of thy children the smile on thy face. 
'Tis the mother's fond look of affection and pride 
As she gives her fair son to the arms of his bride. 

Come, let us be cheerful, we scolded last night, 

And they cheered us and — never mind, — meant it all 

right. 
To-night we harm nothing, we love in the lump. 
Here 's a bumper to Maine in the juice of the pump ! 

Here's to all the good people, wherever they be, 
That have grown in the shade of the liberty tree. 
"We all love its leaves and its blossoms and fruit, 
But pray, have a care for the fence round the root. 

We should like to talk big, 'tis a kind of a right, 
When the tongue has got loose as the waistband grew 

tight. 
But as pretty Miss Prudence remarked to her beau, 
"On its own heap of compost no biddie should crow." 

Well, the night before Dr. Holmes had told 
his audience the story of Io, beloved of Jupiter 
and changed by him into a heifer, to protect her 
from the wrath of Juno, but Juno was too much 
for him, and for her, and sent the gadfly to tor- 
ment Io and to drive her careering over seas and 
continents, until at last she brought up in the 
Valley of the Nile, resumed her original form, 

260 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

became the mother of kings and the founder of a 
new dynasty, and was ever afterwards wor- 
shipped by the Egyptians as the goddess Isis. He 
had likened to the gadfly the edicts of Elizabeth 
and of James, which had driven the Pilgrims, 
and the Puritans, out of the English Church, and 
had sent them over the broad ocean to found a 
new empire. And when Mr. Pierpont found in 
what a delightful frame of mind Dr. Holmes had 
come there in spite of the discomfort of the night 
before, he responded to his verse with this: 

Our Brother Holmes's gadfly was a thing 
That Io knew by its tormenting sting. 
The noisome insect still is known by this, 
But geese and serpents by their harmless hiss. 

And Dr. Holmes immediately jumped to his 
feet, and replied, impromptu: 

Well said, my trusty brother, bravely done; 
Sit down, good neighbor, now I you one. 

That is the way we celebrated the day fifty 
years ago, and we had as good a time as I have 
ever known the New England Society to have 
since. 

But now I have another duty very briefly to 
perform, by right of seniority, as an ex-President 
of this Society; and that is to say a few words 
about the ex-Presidents. Considering that I was 
elected President of this Society thirty-eight 
years ago, and that all my predecessors and my 

261 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

seven immediate successors have already crossed 
the Great Divide, I think perhaps I had better 
avail myself of my chance while I have it, to say 
a few words for the ex-Presidents. Not all. The 
living ex-Presidents — General Woodford and Mr. 
Bliss and Judge Howland needn't be afraid of 
that— they can speak for themselves. When we 
retire from the chair we pass into the ranks, and 
eat our Boston baked beans and pumpkin pie 
with that humility which is characteristic of all 
New Englanders. But of the departed ex-Presi- 
dents, and of three of them, who were very dear 
to me, I wish to say a few words. I think this can 
be said of all without any invidious distinction, 
without singling out any from the list, of all the 
ex-Presidents of the Society, that they were most 
typical New Englanders in New York, and be- 
cause of the qualities which they showed in that 
way, they were elected your Presidents. What 
do I mean by typical New Englanders in New 
York? Let me see if I cannot state it in a very 
few words, in a way which will commend itself 
to many of you, from your own personal experi- 
ence. 

In an humble old homestead in New England, 
in town or country, presided over by God-fearing 
and man-loving parents, where both plain liv- 
ing, very plain living, and very high 
thinking prevailed, the whole object of the 
family life from the beginning to the end 
was to create a future for the sons and 
daughters. The whole of every year was dedi- 

262 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

cated to that, and every sacrifice that was neces- 
sary was made to give the boys and the girls the 
finest education which their times afforded. I 
remember one such household where the strug- 
gle was strenuous and unceasing, and it was the 
proud boast of the parents that they did succeed, 
on a modest professional income, in keeping four 
sons, Mr. President, four sons at once, in one 
single year, in one annual catalogue of Harvard 
College. 

How were such triumphs achieved? Of course, 
it was by absolute self-denial ; by utter self-sacri- 
fice; by subordinating always the present to the 
future; by really merging the entire lives of the 
parents in the success and future career of their 
children. All honor to such fathers and mothers, 
who are and always have been the great glory 
of New England! They are entitled to the chief 
part of the credit, rather than the children. A 
shame would it be to the children, if conscience, 
and duty, and enterprise, and public spirit, and 
patriotism were not quickened and nourished by 
such nurture and such discipline. 

Thus bred and trained, the boy comes to man's 
estate and looks about him. The world is all be- 
fore him where to choose, and if health be suffi- 
cient and courage dwell within him, and that stern 
tenacity of purpose, which is indispensable to 
success anywhere, as he looks out upon the world 
New York with its teeming life and its splendid 
prizes holds out to him an irresistible fascination. 
Leaving his home, followed by the blessings and 

263 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

the hopes of those dear ones who have done so 
much for him, he comes to New York empty- 
handed; but with a courage all his own, and bear- 
ing perhaps one letter of introduction from some 
prominent person in his neighborhood to some 
New Englander of a preceding generation, whose 
success here has found an echo in his native re- 
gion. The letter gives him all the credit it can, 
and commends him to this friend to smooth his 
first steps. By this, or by some means, getting his 
foot upon the lowest round of the ladder; he can 
do his own climbing after that. If he has good 
fortune— for after all " the race is not always to 
the swift nor the battle to the strong, nor riches 
to men of understanding, but time and chance 
happen to them all " — if he has good fortune, he 
can reasonably be certain of success here, and 
possibly may become President of the New Eng- 
land Society. 

Such is my idea of the typical New Englander 
in New York. There were three of your ex- 
Presidents who were very near and dear to me. 
I grieved at their absence when I came home from 
abroad, and remembered the warm hand-grasp 
which each gave me when I went away. All 
were distinguished ex-Presidents of this Society. 
I refer to Mr. Evarts, Mr. Carter, and Mr. Bea- 
man. 

What a splendid example of New England cul- 
ture and New England training was Mr. Evarts! 
I owe him more than words can tell. My connec- 
tion with him was very close, from my arrival 

264 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

here in 1855 until his death in 1901. I brought 
to him a letter of introduction, such as I have 
described, from Rufus Choate, who was then at 
the very zenith of his fame. A few years before 
he had delivered before this society his famous 
oration, of which the refrain was " A Church 
without a Bishop and a State without a King." 
He was most beloved and most honored by all 
New Englanders, as well as by the rest of the 
country. When I handed that letter to Mr. Evarts 
he took me by the hand and said : ' ' Join the New 
England Society, and come into my office." And 
my fortune was made! My first steps were most 
effectively smoothed by him. 

What a great professional career he enjoyed; 
how he leaped to the front almost at the begin- 
ning of his life here in 1840, and maintained his 
place to the end against all competitors, and with 
the entire confidence of the profession and the 
community! His career professionally was as 
fortunate as it was well deserved. It was most 
unique, for certainly never in this country be- 
fore, and never since, did four great forensic 
causes occur in the short time while one and the 
same man was at that professional height which 
commended him as a leader in all of them. I 
refer to the impeachment of a President, the 
Electoral Commission, the Geneva Arbitration, 
and the trial of the Beecher case— all testing pro- 
fessional capacity in the very highest form and 
in every varied way, and in each case he was 
found fully equal to the occasion. Then what a 

265 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

leader lie was of public sentiment! Courageous, 
conservative, learned, lie was always willing to 
give his service and his advice and guidance to 
his fellow citizens. Many of you remember his 
sparkling wit, how it lightened and enlivened all 
the meetings of this Society, of which he was the 
life and the soul for many years. He was, in 
truth, the quickest-witted man that I have ever 
met on either side of the water. Character is 
what tells. It was that grand, unfailing Puritan 
character, guided by conscience, devoted to duty, 
that gave him predominance among his fellow 
citizens and made him dear to their hearts. So 
that he, if any man, deserves some public monu- 
ment in New York to transmit to future genera- 
tions the knowledge of his great character and 
his invaluable public services. 

What shall I say of Mr. Carter, another of your 
great ex-Presidents and another of the great 
products of New England soil and of Harvard 
culture? When I entered Harvard College in 
1848 I found him there already a marked man, 
where he had been for two years, dominating the 
minds and affections of his fellows. When he 
came to New York at the time of his graduation 
it was the certain expectation and hope of all in 
his college that he would meet with great suc- 
cess here. Carter had a hard, up-hill fight from 
the beginning, but he reached the goal of his am- 
bition, which was the leadership of the New 
York bar and the American bar. He was 
one of those pure lawyers, who owed noth- 

266 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

ing to the adventitious aid of title or of 
office; one of that little group of great untitled 
advocates of whom America is so proud, like Mr. 
Horace Binney, and Mr. Sidney Bartlett, Mr. 
Daniel Lord, and Mr. Charles 'Conor. He was 
one of that famous galaxy and was equal to the 
best. On great public questions he was always at 
the service of the community, but he could never 
quite keep step with any party. He never nar- 
rowed his mind to give up to party what was 
meant for mankind— I mean his great personal 
character, and influence, and wisdom. It is but 
yesterday that he was taken from us, and it does 
seem to me that the New England Society and the 
City of New York have met with no greater loss 
in recent years, and that as long as manly char- 
acter, great mental endowments, and sublime 
public spirit are to be rewarded with admiration 
he must be accounted among your truly great. 

A word now about Mr. Beaman, another most 
typical New Englander in New York, trained 
under the very discipline that I have described 
to you and showing all its best merits and results. 
He was nearer to me than a brother, and I cannot 
sit down without saying a word or two about 
him. When Walter Scott was dying he said to 
Lockhart as his parting blessing, "Be a good 
man, my dear, be a good man; " and that is ex- 
actly what Beaman was in a preeminent degree— 
with the biggest of hearts and the warmest of 
sympathy, and the most far-reaching sense of 
the brotherhood of man. I think that he had 

267 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN 1855 

more friends in New York and more friends in 
the country than any man I have ever known. 
He had a singular and marked capacity, a genu- 
ine instinct, for friendship. He had a full, great- 
hearted sympathy, and he touched human rela- 
tions at more points than any other man among 
us. All the people that he met were his friends, 
and, besides that, he had a nobility of character 
which gave his judgment and opinion vast and 
beneficent weight with all with whom he came in 
contact. I know that his intuitions of law were, 
nine times out of ten, better than the results of 
other men's study. He was a most delight- 
ful and beautiful character, and he was one of 
those men of whom this Society and this city can 
well cherish the memory. " He that would be 
greatest among you, let him be the servant of 
all," and that is what Beaman always was, and 
was always trying to be, and so I think I have a 
right to class him among your great Presidents. 



268 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

Address delivered before the Bar Association of the City of New 
York, March 13, 1906. 

JAMES COOLIDGE CARTEE was born at 
Lancaster, in the State of Massachusetts, on 
October 14th, 1827, and died in New York City, 
February 14th, 1905— his life covering a period 
of seventy-seven years and four months, just two- 
thirds of the existence of the Government of the 
United States. He thus lived during the admin- 
istration of twenty of our twenty-five Presidents. 
In this single lifetime our country grew from 
twenty-four States, with 12,000,000 of people, to 
forty-five, with 80,000,000 and 10,000,000 more in 
our conquered dependencies— made material 
progress such as no equal period of the world has 
witnessed in any country, and became a world 
power ready and able to take a just and leading 
part in international affairs. Mr. Carter, coming 
into life with no advantages whatever but his 
own natural gifts stimulated by poverty and the 
spur of necessity, grew with the growth of the 
country and by sheer force of brains and char- 
acter, had become at the time of his death one 
of her best known and most valued citizens, the 
acknowledged leader of the great profession of 
the law, foremost among its 110,000 votaries— 
and exercising a wide and powerful influence for 

271 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

good among the people of his time. Such a career 
is no accident, and it is interesting to recall, as 
briefly as possible, the steps by which he rose from 
obscurity to national and international distinc- 
tion. 

When I entered Harvard College in 1848, Mr. 
Carter, who had already been there for two years, 
was a very marked man among the three hundred 
students who then constituted the entire com- 
munity of that little college. To very command- 
ing abilities he added untiring industry, and to 
lofty character most pleasing manners, a com- 
bination which made him easily foremost. He 
was filled with an honorable ambition, and took 
all the prizes, and not content with perfection in 
the college curriculum, he took an interest in 
the public questions of the day, and cultivated 
the art of public speaking with discriminating 
assiduity. Like all the young men of that day he 
was a devoted admirer of Mr. Webster, who did 
more than any other man to kindle the patriotism 
and arouse the national spirit of the younger 
generation, and I always thought that he modelled 
himself upon that noble example in style, in ex- 
pression and in the mode of treating every ques- 
tion that arose. Indeed in his last years I re- 
garded him as the last survivor of the Websterian 
School. Dr. Storrs, who died some years before 
him, was another example of that noble school, 
and if he had followed the law as he began it, 
he would have been just such another lawyer as 
Carter, and his most formidable rival. 

272 



JAMES COOLIDGE CAETEE 

From lack of means, Mr. Carter found it a 
hard struggle to get through college, and even 
to enter it. For this reason he came two years 
late, having, I believe, engaged in some commer- 
cial employment to enable him to enter. He did 
not hesitate to avail himself of the generous aid 
of an admiring fellow townsman who recognized 
his great qualities, and meant that they should 
not be lost to the world. Just as Eufus Choate 
once told me, that it would be better to borrow 
the money for your college education at ten per 
cent, compound interest, than not to get the edu- 
cation at all. 

Well, seeing his manifest ability, his spirited 
and attractive personality, and his sympathetic 
interest in all our college affairs, we all recog- 
nized him as our leader. He exercised a potent 
influence upon all his companions. He was made 
Class Orator at Commencement— and entered up- 
on life with assured prospects of success. But 
still the lack of means was an obstacle to his im- 
mediate entrance upon the profession of the law, 
to which he looked forward as the only one pos- 
sible for him. I believe that he never had a 
thought of any other occupation in life. So, up- 
on graduating he betook himself to teaching as 
a necessary means to that great end. 

It is interesting to read the letter which Judge 
Willard Phillips, a great jurist and author of the 
leading work on marine insurance gave him to 
the gentleman in New York, who had applied to 
him to recommend a teacher in his family. The 

273 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

letter bears date June, 1850, just before he grad- 
uated. It says: 

" The young gentleman who has been spoken 
with for instructor in your family is Mr. James 
C. Carter, of Lancaster, Mass., a member of the 
Senior Class. He can teach all the branches of 
English education and the classics, he is, as Pro- 
fessor Pierce assures me, a thoroughly educated, 
talented, accomplished, sensible and pleasing 
young gentleman, of good principles and high 
morals. ' ' 

How many of us have had our first steps in 
life smoothed by just such letters ! 

At the same time that he took this engagement 
for a year's service as a teacher in the summer 
of 1850, he entered the office of Kent & Davies as 
a student, but his attendance there was only 
nominal. This firm was composed of Henry E. 
Davies, afterwards Chief Judge of the Court of 
Appeals, and William Kent, the son of the Chan- 
cellor, who had been at one time a Circuit Judge, 
before the adoption of the Constitution of 1846. 
He always spoke of Judge Davies with great re- 
spect and esteem, but he simply loved Judge 
Kent, of whom he always spoke to me in terms of 
unbounded affection and admiration. 

He remained in New York teaching till the au- 
tumn of 1851, when he entered the Dane Law 
School at Harvard and remained there three 
terms till the spring of 1853— so that I was with 

274 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

him there again for six months, and had full op- 
portunity to observe that the same qualities 
which had made him so distinguished in college, 
to which was now added an unbounded enthusiasm 
for the law, made him still a leading and com- 
manding spirit among his new associates. 

What an impression he had left at the office in 
New York, in spite of his scanty attendance there, 
appears from the fact that in February, 1853, Mr. 
Davies visited the Law School and said that he 
had come on to see Mr. Carter — that his firm of 
Kent & Davies was about to dissolve — that he was 
going to take Henry J. Scudder as junior partner 
and wanted Mr. Carter to come to him as manag- 
ing clerk. Mr. Carter accepted the position, and 
was soon after admitted to the Bar in New York. 
In 1854, Mr. Davies withdrew, to become Cor- 
poration Counsel, and the firm of Scudder & Car- 
ter was formed, with whom it was my good for- 
tune to study the Code in the following year. 
This firm under its successive organizations of 
Scudder and Carter, Carter and Ledyard, Carter, 
Rollins and Ledyard, and Carter, Ledyard and 
Milburn has occupied a great place in the annals 
of the profession in New York. 

But the firm of Scudder and Carter started in 
1854 substantially as a new firm, and Mr. Car- 
ter, instead of deriving any special benefit from 
it at the outset in his career at the Bar, had to 
make his own way there. It served as a good 
personal introduction to the profession, by whom 
he was received in that cordial and hospitable 

275 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

spirit which, when our Bar was smaller, was more 
characteristic of it. 

He made no brilliant debut in the courts, as Mr. 
Evarts had done in the celebrated Monroe Ed- 
wards case. He was not plunged at once into a 
great volume of business as some of us were who 
joined as juniors, old and long established firms, 
the elder members of which were already over- 
worked. He had to paddle his own canoe and 
work his way up stream. But slowly and surely, 
on a solid basis of work well done, he advanced 
step by step, and soon came to be recognized by 
his seniors at the Bar, by such men as Daniel 
Lord and 'Conor and Cutting and William M. 
Evarts and William Curtis Noyes, as a young man 
who must be reckoned with, and as a foeman 
likely to be worthy to meet them in any cause. 

From the first he aimed at nothing short of 
perfection in everything that he undertook, and 
as his ideals were high, and his conscience su- 
preme, this involved an amount of labor and self 
absorption seldom if ever exceeded. In those 
days he had but few social duties or pleasures to 
distract him from minding the main chance, suc- 
cess on the forensic side of the profession, and 
to that he was able and eager to devote all his 
energies of mind and body. I know of no lawyer 
whose success was more fairly earned or more 
thoroughly deserved, or less derived from ad- 
ventitious sources or external aid. By his own 
might he worked his way to the front. Let me 
try very briefly to trace the personal qualities 

276 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

which were the weapons by which he won the 
victory. For I have known personally all the 
lawyers in New York who for the last fifty years 
have one after another been foremost among us 
—and no two of them were alike. 

In the first place, he had a very sound mind in 
a very sound body. But those are the common 
and necessary requisites of any measure of suc- 
cess. His mental endowments were of a very su- 
perior and splendid quality, and he appreciated 
his own intellectual powers and revelled in the 
exercise of them. Thinking, which to most of us 
is a painful and tiresome process, he delighted in, 
and pursued it as a most fascinating game. His 
mind was of a decidedly philosophical turn, fond 
of considering and solving all the problems of 
human society and progress — and the reasoning 
powers which in most of us are dwarfed or 
twisted, in him were naturally and fully devel- 
oped. Logic as a pastime was as acceptable to him 
as golf or bridge is to the average man to-day. 

He was undoubtedly extremely ambitious— but 
his ambition was of a very high order and made 
of the sternest kind of stuff. He would not stoop 
to conquer and disdained to climb by unworthy 
means. His nature was robust and his disposi- 
tion combative, so that he loved the contests of 
the forum, and its triumphs and trophies were a 
great joy to him. He eagerly seized the palm of 
victory, but with him it was always palma non 
sine pulvere, and always fairly won. 

His conscience was clear as crystal, and never 
277 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

went back on him, as it sometimes does on men 
whose mental vision is less clear than his. 

Absolute independence was the controlling fea- 
ture of Mr. Carter's mind and character. It 
marked and guided his whole conduct, profes- 
sional, public and personal. He must act on his 
own carefully matured judgment, no matter with 
whom or with what it brought him in conflict— 
and he had the courage which naturally accom- 
panies such independence of character. 

He was not without a large share of self asser- 
tion, and yet was one of the most unselfish of 
men. 

Imbued with a high sense of public duty, and 
most ardently patriotic, he studied with keen in- 
terest public questions as they arose from time 
to time, and was ever willing to give his fellow 
citizens the benefit of his opinion, but he never 
sought office and never allowed his interest in 
public affairs to distract him for a moment from 
the pursuit of his chosen profession, well know- 
ing what a jealous mistress the law is. 

His power of labor was prodigious, and as he 
had given no hostages to fortune in the shape of 
wife and children, he was always ready and able 
to serve his clients and the cause of justice with 
relentless devotion. 

By nature warm hearted and magnanimous, he 
was one of the most loyal and persistent of 
friends, and in spite of his contentious life, I 
never heard of his having an enemy. He was too 
just and generous for that. 

278 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

These excellent mental, moral and physical en- 
dowments, were the effective instruments by 
which he worked his way to fame and fortune. 

His professional conduct and habits were just 
what you would have expected from such a char- 
acter. He honored and magnified his profession, 
and fully recognized the debt which, as Lord Ba- 
con says, we all owe to it. He scorned all mean 
and trifling arts, and relied solely on the merits 
of his cause and his own prowess in maintain- 
ing it. 

He had a unique habit when he had embarked 
in a cause, of first convincing himself of its jus- 
tice, before he undertook to convince court, or 
jury, or adversary. He was very far from limit- 
ing himself to causes that he thought he could 
win, or to such as were sound in law or right in 
fact. No genuine advocate that I know of has 
ever done that. He recognized and maintained the 
true relation of the advocate to the courts and 
the community, that it is a strictly professional 
relation, and that either side of any cause that a 
court may hear, the advocate may properly main- 
tain. For him newspaper clamor had no terrors. 
He realized that the newspaper is accuser, judge 
and executioner, all in one, but for all that he 
could and did maintain the unpopular side of a 
controversy with the same zeal and fidelity, as if 
the whole press were backing his client's claims. 
As his fame increased he was called, like the lead- 
ing physicians, into the most grave and critical 
cases— and I have no doubt that he lost in the 

279 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

long run more cases than lie won. But having 
once undertaken the conduct of a case he made 
a careful study of it to try to build upon the 
facts a theory consistent with his own sense of 
right and justice, which he might fairly and ear- 
nestly present to the favorable consideration of 
the court— and in this he generally succeeded — 
and having once convinced himself, he could ap- 
ply all the clearness, force and earnestness of 
which he was master to convince the tribunal, 
whether court or jury. 

He had such reliance on his own judgment, 
and confidence in his own opinion, that when he 
had once found the theory satisfactory to his own 
mind, on which he ought to present the cause, 
he never changed or departed from it, no matter 
what arguments the other side might present, or 
what decisions the court might make as the cause 
progressed; and even when the court of last re- 
sort had pronounced against him, he bowed to 
the law which the court by reason of its power 
had declared, but still maintained the theory 
which by the power of his reason he had evolved 
in the case. This forensic habit often gave to his 
weaker adversaries, who could tack and trim their 
sails as the judicial breezes changed, an appar- 
ent advantage. He would present his case on the 
first and second appeal, more strongly and more 
forcibly, of course, but it was always the same 
view of the same case, and we knew exactly where 
and how we should have to strike to meet it. This 
absolute reliance on his own judgment some- 

280 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

times led him to underrate the force of his oppo- 
nent's position. He affected in such cases to 
treat the propositions of his adversary as " no- 
tions,' ' and to be surprised and indignant when 
they commanded the approval of the Court. 

In another respect, also, he sometimes in the 
arena exposed to his adversary a vulnerable 
flank. So masterly was his independence of mind 
and character, that he was not always willing to 
admit or to recognize the binding force of pre- 
cedents, however numerous, which failed to run 
the gauntlet of his own reasoning powers. One 
of his favorite maxims was, that nothing was fi- 
nally decided until it was decided right, and so 
no amount of so-called authorities was sufficient 
to dissuade him from maintaining the contrary 
view. 

So earnest and zealous and well sustained was 
his advocacy, that he sometimes presented the 
appearance of seeming to drive the court, which 
a weak judge would resent, and take refuge in 
his power to decide, while a strong judge would 
lock horns with him on the spot. 

Mr. Carter's forensic character was a most in- 
teresting one to study, and it was always hard to 
say in the particular case whether those fea- 
tures, which seemed to give his adversary an ad- 
vantage, were elements of strength or of weak- 
ness. But on the whole, he grew to be the most 
formidable advocate, in both the State and Fed- 
eral courts, and was, I think, so recognized 
throughout the country. 

281 



JAMES COOLIDGE CAETEE 

My judgment of him in this respect is con- 
firmed by a review of the cases in which he was 
constantly engaged. They were mostly leading 
cases of great difficulty, magnitude and danger, 
involving the severest responsibility, and chal- 
lenging the best powers of the advocate. A mere 
list of their titles recalls their overwhelming im- 
portance, and the prodigious labor that must 
have been involved in their preparation and ar- 
gument. In all the important branches of the 
law, he seemed to be equally at home. Great 
maritime and commercial causes, great railroad 
controversies and, above all, great constitutional 
cases were constantly engrossing his attention 
and taxing his powers. His sense of duty and 
justice to his clients was shown, not only by his 
exhaustless labors in their behalf, but by the 
extreme moderation of his fees and charges. We 
used sometimes to think that in his careful con- 
sideration for his clients, he hardly did justice to 
the profession; and in this respect, by the great 
weight of his reputation and example, rather 
lowered the standard which we, with a more real- 
izing sense of the wants of life, desired always to 
see highly advanced. But as long as lofty char- 
acter, commanding abilities, and loyalty to the 
profession and to the truth constitute just and 
abiding claims to the admiration of lawyers and 
of laymen, we shall always be proud of his leader- 
ship and grateful for his example. A nobler 
model, on which young advocates may mould 
their careers, cannot be found in legal annals. 

282 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

Early in his professional career, Mr. Carter's 
splendid talents and faculties attracted the spe- 
cial attention of the great leaders of that day, and 
particularly of Mr. Charles O 'Conor, who was 
preeminent among them, not merely for pro- 
found erudition, but also for an experience sel- 
dom equalled, in all branches of the law, for his 
keen and subtle learning, and for his supreme con- 
tempt of all shams and false pretences in the way 
of the profession. He saw in Mr. Carter a kind- 
dred spirit, and a junior upon whom he could 
rely for thoroughness equal to his own— for in- 
exhaustible power of labor, and for absolute de- 
votion to any cause which he undertook, and they 
soon became co-laborers in several causes of 
unique magnitude, importance and difficulty. 
Probably no lawyer then at the bar was so ex- 
acting of himself or of his juniors in the prepara- 
tion and trial of a cause as Mr. 'Conor, and Mr. 
Carter fully satisfied his most strenuous demands. 
In the great cause of the City against Tweed, to 
establish the claims of the City for that long 
series of deep-laid frauds and peculations by 
which, through a period of many years, it had 
been robbed of millions— a trial which extended 
through several weeks and involved an examina- 
tion of the most complicated system of thefts 
which had been exposed by the ingenious re- 
searches of Governor Tilden; the combined pow- 
ers of Mr. Peckham, Mr. Carter, and Mr. 'Conor 
were drawn upon to their utmost to unravel the 
tangled skein. 

283 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

Mr. Carter's intimate and constant association 
with. Mr. 'Conor, and laboring with him through 
many years had a marked and lasting effect up- 
on the younger man— as such associations gen- 
erally do have. The modes of thought and study, 
the absolute thoroughness, the exhaustless re- 
search, the style of speech, and even the modes 
of utterance, and expression of feature and mode 
of gesticulation of the younger man carried al- 
ways a suggestion of his great senior. Of course, 
it was only an unintended and unconscious re- 
semblance—for Mr. Carter was a much broader 
and fuller man than Mr. 'Conor, much more 
highly and generally educated, and more full of 
sympathy and sentiment— a bigger hearted man 
and built on a larger scale. And yet, what he 
thus insensibly imbibed or absorbed from Mr. 
'Conor did strongly characterize his forensic 
conduct and style, and lent much force and em- 
phasis to his bearing in court— and always re- 
called an impression of the great Irish advocate. 

Before the trial of the Tweed case, another tre- 
mendous cause, still more laborious, absorbing 
and exciting had arisen— The Jumel Will Case, 
and in this, in all its various forms from begin- 
ning to end, Mr. Carter and Mr. 'Conor were 
constantly associated, and bore between them the 
whole brunt and burden of the arduous contest. 
It involved not only the most difficult and diverse 
questions of law that called for great learning 
and study, but issues of fact of a highly danger- 
ous and complicated character: questions of pedi- 

284 



JAMES COOLIDGE CAETEE 

gree, marriage, paternity and consanguinity — de- 
pendent for their solution upon old and doubtful 
documents and papers, upon the fading memory 
of aged witnesses, upon history and tradition, 
and upon gatherings from the border line of evi- 
dence—all appealing strongly to the imagination 
as well as to the reason of the advocate ; and there 
is no doubt that to this whole range of study and 
preparation, and to the final success in the case, 
Mr. Carter contributed, at least, his full share. 

But he paid a bitter penalty for these splendid 
achievements and triumphs, for, taken with his 
own regular practice, which was already large, 
this additional burden proved too much for even 
his marvellous power of labor, and it ended in a 
truly tragical catastrophe. The exciting trial of 
the Jumel case attracted great popular interest, 
and engaged the attention of Judge Shipman and 
a jury in the United States Circuit Court for 
many weeks. The long hours of every day in 
court were a constant nervous strain, and the 
longer hours of every night were protracted 
vigils of labor— with an utter disregard of the 
commonest laws of health, even of the universal 
rule that the only cure for fatigue is rest— so that 
the wonder was that mere flesh and blood could 
stand it as long as they did. 

Mr. 'Conor was a rule unto himself, and re- 
versed the usual custom, taking himself the open- 
ing of the case and throwing the summing up upon 
his junior, so that Mr. Carter, in the true spirit 
of the advocate, was in his own mind summing 

285 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

up the case every minute from the first word of 
the first witness to the last word of the last, and 
all the while defying the demands of nature for 
regular food, sleep and repose. His part was 
splendidly performed, but when the fatal morning 
of the closing argument arrived, and Mr. Carter 
arose to address the jury, after a few halting 
words it was manifest that nature could go no 
further, and he collapsed upon the spot, so that 
Mr. 'Conor, whose physique seemed to be made 
of gutta-percha and steel springs, had to take 
his place and sum up the case himself. But with 
the true grit and pluck that characterized him, 
he persevered, after a temporary recovery, in the 
trial of the Tweed case, and conducted a vast 
mass of litigation for the City besides, which re- 
sulted in a more disastrous breakdown, and for a 
period of nearly three years he appeared no more 
at the Bar or in New York. All his unique power 
of labor had disappeared— he was incapable of 
the least exertion, and his friends who saw him 
in the interval hardly dared hope that he would 
reappear in the arena whose contests were so 
dear to him. 

But his splendid constitution contained such 
reservoirs of strength and such living springs of 
vigor that in 1880, after three years of complete 
retirement, he came once more upon the scene, 
fully armed and equipped and ready for new con- 
tests. In truth, his long period of retirement and 
repose seemed to have renewed and invigorated 
all his powers. So that he entered upon another 

286 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

twenty years of professional achievement of the 
very highest order and dignity, which he sus- 
tained with new and constant safeguards of re- 
pose and sport and exercise, the neglect of which 
had so nearly proved fatal to him before. 

From 1880 to 1900 his employment in the 
courts, State and Federal, was constant in causes 
of the greatest magnitude and importance, a mere 
enumeration of which demonstrates that he was 
all the while a most potent factor in the develop- 
ment of the law and the settlement of momentous 
constitutional questions, and these involved an 
amount of labor and study that is almost ap- 
palling. But his vigor seemed rather to increase 
with his years, and he was more than adequate 
to all the demands upon him. 

All these great and conspicuous cases con- 
ducted with exquisite professional skill, with un- 
failing courage and courtesy, and with all the 
eloquence that earnest conviction and ever youth- 
ful enthusiasm could arouse, established his fame 
as a lawyer throughout the country, on a basis 
as nearly imperishable as any lawyer's ever can 
be. But his employment in 1893, as one of the 
chief counsel of the United States before the Tri- 
bunal established by the Treaty with Great Bri- 
tain for the settlement of the long vexed Behring 
Sea dispute in regard to the Seal Fisheries— and 
the characteristic manner in which he performed 
that great service, gave him an international 
reputation of the highest value. He was asso- 
ciated with Edward J. Phelps and Frederic R. 

287 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

Coudert, and to oppose them Great Britain, as she 
always does on snch occasions, selected her best, 
in the persons of Sir Charles Rnssell and Sir Rich- 
ard Webster, both afterwards Lord Chief Jus- 
tice of England, under the names of Lord Rus- 
sell of Killowen and Lord Alverstone. Both of 
those gentlemen have often expressed to me their 
profound appreciation and admiration of Mr. 
Carter's ability and forensic faculties, as dis- 
played in that great international cause, and their 
warm friendship for him, which grew out of their 
protracted and intimate acquaintance with him 
in the course of it — in which he showed himself as 
the great lawyer and gentleman. The contestants 
were admirably matched, but the balance of the 
cause was most unequal, for our counsel had to 
rest their case upon the claim of property right 
in the seals, accruing to the United States from 
their being bred upon the Pribiloff Islands, which 
we had acquired from Russia as part of the 
Alaska purchase, and our consequent right and 
duty to protect them wherever found on the high 
seas, to the extent that we might replevy them 
at the South Pole, and by force prevent any in- 
terference with them by vessels of other nations 
pursuing the business of pelagic sealing. The 
authority for the first proposition at common law 
was of the 'most meagre character, while there 
had certainly been no international agreement to 
the second proposition. 

Great Britain relied upon the universally es- 
tablished doctrine of the freedom of the seas, and 

288 



JAMES COOLIDGKE CAETEE 

upon the proposition that the right of fishing on 
the high seas could not be interfered with except 
by the common consent of nations restraining the 
right. 

We certainly had the strongest moral grounds 
for claiming the protection of the herd of seals 
from destruction, on our own account and on ac- 
count of the world at large— and if the case could 
have been decided upon what ought to have been 
international law, our contention would have 
been more hopeful— indeed irresistible. 

It was just the case for the exercise of Mr. Car- 
ter J s characteristic qualities and methods in their 
very finest and highest forms. It fell to his lot, 
in the division of labor between our counsel, to 
open the case, which he did in a most exhaustive 
and eloquent argument of seven days. The 
preparation which this involved was incredible— 
for his argument contained an exhaustive history 
of the controversy ; — a complete narrative of Eus- 
sian and American rule in Behring Sea for nearly 
a hundred years ; — an exploration of the habits of 
seals and of seal fishing during the entire period ; 
— a discussion of the principles of international 
law bearing nearly or remotely on the subject of 
dispute, the origin and growth of the right of 
property, particularly in animals, and the inter- 
pretation and effect of all treaties and regula- 
tions bearing upon the questions involved. It is 
needless to say that after months of toilsome 
preparation, Mr. Carter came to the argument 
with a theory of the case which, to his own mind, 

289 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

was absolutely irresistible, and pressed it upon 
the tribunal with an eloquence, earnestness and 
force which even he had never equalled; — that 
his splendid gifts of imagination and illustration 
were brought into play with graphic power ; — and 
that if we could have won the case by demon- 
strating what international law ought to have 
been, and what expediency, humanity and civili- 
zation demanded in the particular case, it was 
more than demonstrated. 

His argument, like all his arguments at the Bar 
from the beginning, was extremely dignified, and 
pitched upon a very lofty plane of morals and 
right. But he was storming an impregnable cita- 
del, when he sought to diminish the freedom of 
the seas without the warrant of an international 
agreement to that effect. It is greatly to be re- 
gretted that his labors could not have resulted 
in an effective agreement between the nations to 
that effect, so far as pelagic sealing was con- 
cerned, for the herds have already nearly van- 
ished from the Islands, and the industry, most 
useful under proper limits, has been well nigh 
destroyed. 

The time prescribed to me will hardly permit 
even an allusion to the great services rendered 
by Mr. Carter in maintaining by precept and ex- 
ample the dignity of the profession, and its pro- 
tection from everything unworthy; — in preserv- 
ing the common law in its integrity as the basis 
and method of our jurisprudence, and rescuing it 
from the destructive assaults of the wholesale 

290 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

codifier; — in his constant and courageous war- 
fare against everything that looked like corrup- 
tion in the courts or in the profession; — in his 
active participation in the foundation of this As- 
sociation, as the bulwark of a sound and pure 
administration of justice; — in his service again 
and again as its President, and in his persistent 
and successful efforts at all times to keep it up to 
the mark, and to achieve through its instrumen- 
tality the lofty objects of its founders. 

It is melancholy to think how fast the memory 
of all this splendid service and achievement, of 
which I have given such a meagre and inade- 
quate sketch, is fading away. He had for the 
last six or seven years of his life retired absolutely 
from the practice of his profession, so that to the 
younger members of the Bar his face and figure, 
which had once been so familiar in the courts, 
were almost unknown. 

But in these years of retirement, rendered nec- 
essary by constant threats of a return of the mal- 
ady which had once laid him so low, he was never 
idle. He enjoyed these years in the heartiest 
manner, spending a large part of each of them 
in outdoor life and sports which he had learned 
to love so well, and to value so highly, as the 
only safeguards of declining health. But all the 
while his heart and mind were intent upon a 
work, which he has left as a legacy to the profes- 
sion, and which, if I am not mistaken, will long 
perpetuate his reputation as a jurist. 

In a course of carefully prepared lectures on 
291 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

the philosophy of the law, which I have had the 
privilege of reading, completed just before his 
death, and intended to be delivered at the Har- 
vard Law School, he has embodied the rich fruits 
of his ripe experience and learning, of which it 
will be an enduring monument. He has explored 
and portrayed the whole history of human con- 
duct, in support of his favorite theory that law 
instead of being a " command " as defined by 
Austen, and other distinguished writers upon the 
subject, is entirely the growth of custom and of 
public opinion; — that the common law as devel- 
oped by English and American courts is the 
wisest and safest form of administering justice 
and best adapted to the ever changing needs and 
exigencies of human society; — and that all at- 
tempts to substitute in its place a rigid and 
crystallized codification in any form, must neces- 
sarily fail of their object. In this effort he has 
garnered up all the wealth of learning, of imagin- 
ation, of common sense and of foresight, which in 
his long and busy life, devoted to his divine mis- 
tress, he had made his own. It is delightful to 
think that this masterpiece of legal literature, 
practically perfect as it came from his hand, will 
transmit some knowledge of the man to future 
generations, when all the great controversies in 
which he was engaged have lost their interest and 
been forgotten. 

I have necessarily refrained from enlarging at 
all upon the spotless purity and manly indepen- 
dence of his public life and of its great and be- 

292 



JAMES COOLIDGE CARTER 

neficent influence upon the thought of his time — ■ 
and of those charming and endearing traits of 
personal character, which made him so beloved 
in life and so lamented in death by all who had 
the great privilege of knowing him. 



293 



CAEL SCHUEZ 



CARL SCHURZ 



Address delivered at the Schurz memorial meeting, New York, 
November 21, 1906. 



THIS great and brilliant company has assem- 
bled for no funereal rites, for no obituary 
service. We are bere to do honor to the memory 
of a great citizen, to exult in his exalted virtues, 
and to learn the lesson of patriotism from his 
long and honorable life. A noble friend of mine, 
dying, said that his life seemed like the flight of 
a bird through a church from window to window, 
and at best it is 

" Short as the watch that ends the night 
Before the rising sun." 

And our sketches of Carl Schurz to-night must 
be short, indeed, if we are to do justice to this 
splendid program, and enjoy the music which he 
loved so much better than words, however 
weighty. 

I heard Mr. Lincoln at the Cooper Institute in 
1860 say: " Let us have faith that right makes 
might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty 
as we understand it." Search all the books in our 
libraries, and you can find no better statement of 
Mr. Schurz 's rule of life than this. Truth, right, 

297 



CARL SCHURZ 

duty, freedom were the four corners of his chart 
of life, with which all his speech and conduct 
squared. And so it was from the beginning to 
the end. In the first freshness of youth he left 
the university and joined the Revolution of 1848, 
and fought to break oppression and maintain con- 
stitutional liberty. In that marvellous achieve- 
ment of daring and devotion, by which, at the 
deadly peril of his own life, he rescued his old 
teacher and comrade from the fortress in which 
he had been condemned for life to pick oakum for 
the Prussian Government, he furnished to the 
world a heroic romance, worthy to be immortal- 
ized by a new Schiller, a miracle long since cele- 
brated, and always to be celebrated in German 
poetry and song. A refugee from hopeless 
tyranny, he came here into exile and made Amer- 
ica his home. He was himself the choicest example 
of that splendid host of Germans who have en- 
riched and strengthened and fertilized our native 
stock, to produce that composite creature, the 
latest result of time, the blending of all the Cau- 
casian races — the New American. 

With intense devotion he applied himself to 
mastering the English language, that he might 
with free speech utter free thought to free men 
throughout the whole land of his adoption. The 
year before the arrival of Mr. Schurz, I had 
heard Kossuth himself, who in a few months had 
learned the English language in an Austrian 
dungeon, deliver to a Harvard audience an ad- 
dress in our own tongue. But Mr. Schurz as a 

298 



CAEL SCHUEZ 

linguist surpassed even Kossuth, for he soon be- 
came one of our foremost orators, perhaps the 
most cogent and convincing debater of his time; 
and if his hearers shut their eyes and trusted 
only to their ears, they might well believe that he 
had never spoken any language but our own. 

With an inherent instinct for freedom, he was 
at one with Lincoln, that " a house divided 
against itself must fall, and that this government 
could not permanently endure half slave and half 
free," and so he took part in German in that 
great debate with Douglas, and made the vast 
hosts of his countrymen in the West familiar 
with the vital issue in that irrepressible conflict. 
In the convention of 1860, that nominated Lin- 
coln, he insisted successfully, with Curtis, upon 
incorporating in the platform the cardinal princi- 
ples of the Declaration of Independence. When 
the war broke out, and it became manifest that 
the Gordian knot of slavery could be cut only by 
the sword, he resigned the lazy post of Minister 
to Spain, and on many a bloody field — at Manas- 
sas, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Chatta- 
nooga^ — with dauntless skill and courage he 
fought for freedom here as he had fought for it 
at home. 

As a Senator, I think he made the noblest rec- 
ord of his noble life. There his genius, his cour- 
age, his humanity, and his patriotism had full 
play. There politics, patronage, the chance of re- 
election were nothing to him. He was there not 
to serve his State only, but the whole country, in 

299 



CARL SCHURZ 

the true spirit of Burke 's letter to the electors of 
Bristol. With exhaustless energy, he mastered 
every important question, and led in a great de- 
bate, and regarded the foundations of the Con- 
stitution as of vastly greater importance than 
any ephemeral question of the day, however burn- 
ing. He always stood by these great landmarks, 
that the executive should keep within its constitu- 
tional limits, and not invade by one hair 's breadth 
the functions of the legislature or judiciary; — 
and that they should do the like by it ; — and, above 
all, that the Federal power should not encroach 
upon the State power, nor this upon that, but each 
keep within its own limits ; — that the delicate bal- 
ance of our dual system, which has justly excited 
the wonder and admiration of the world, might 
not be disturbed. Oh, for such a Senator now! 
What would not this great Empire State give 
for one such man — for two such men, if happily 
they could be found! 

As a Cabinet Minister, too, his record is a noble 
one. Politics and politicians he turned " neck 
and heels ' ' out of his department, and made ten- 
ure of office there depend only upon merit and fit- 
ness. Frauds and plunderers found in him their 
most dangerous foe. He was a real father to the 
Indian tribes, and fought in defence of our vast 
forest domains that were then already falling 
victims to robbers. In short, it is sufficient to 
say of him that his administration of the depart- 
ment of the Interior is only equalled by that of 
his distinguished successor, Mr. Hitchcock, who 

300 



CARL SCHURZ 

now, after six years of service, is retiring, car- 
rying with him imperishable laurels. 

Compelled by the exigencies of our political 
system to abstain from holding public office dur- 
ing the last twenty years of his life, his inde- 
pendence, his courage, his spotless character, and 
boundless knowledge of affairs have been of vast 
service to his country. Taking up the reins of 
the Civil Service Reform from the dying hands 
of one who in this city and in such company as 
this will ever be held in fond remembrance — 
George William Curtis — he carried it to its pres- 
ent advanced state, and has thereby done in- 
estimable good. A fearless foe of every wrong, 
an independent champion of every wise reform, 
setting personal consequences always at defiance 
where public service was concerned, he has left 
to the young Americans of the present and the 
future an example of honesty, courage, and patri- 
otism; a richer legacy than if he had been able 
to transmit to them, or to each of them, the com- 
bined wealth of all the millionaires of the land. 
Truly, to recall again the words of Lincoln, he 
had faith that right makes might, and he dared 
to the end to do his duty as he understood it. 



301 



THE ENGLISH BAR 



THE ENGLISH BAR 

Address delivered before the New York State Bar Association, 
at Albany, N. Y., January 16, 1907. 

IT is certainly delightful to welcome so large 
a gathering of the active and prominent 
members of the Bar of the State as are assem- 
bled here to-day. I am sure that our meetings 
and discussions and our published reports are of 
great value to the profession. 

I seize upon the first opportunity to thank you 
for the great honor done me in electing me as 
your President after a long absence from the 
country, during which I was wholly withdrawn 
from your ranks. 

In selecting a subject for my address, it has 
occurred to me that some account of the English 
Bar, as it was my great privilege to meet its mem- 
bers under the pleasantest circumstances, might 
possibly be of interest and advantage on an oc- 
casion like the present. 

You will, of course, understand that I make 
no reference to the other branch of the profes- 
sion, which is so distinct — the Attorneys and So- 
licitors — upon whose learning, efficiency and 
skill, the whole of the social and business life of 
England very largely depends; but I speak only 
of the Bar proper, and of it especially as repre- 

305 



THE ENGLISH BAR 

sented by its leading members, with whom I had 
much personal intercourse. These are really a 
group by themselves, generally University men 
of generous culture, not deficient in means to sus- 
tain them during the long and dreary waiting 
for briefs after their call to the Bar, and then 
working their way to the front by force of char- 
acter, courage and ability, and universally recog- 
nized as the worthy representatives of the whole 
body of our great profession. 

Let me say in the first place as to the English 
Bench and Bar both, that I always found them 
full of interest in, and sympathy with, their 
brethren in America. Their fraternity with us 
was always cordially acknowledged, as that of 
two great branches of the same stock. In view 
of our common history and language and our 
identical system of jurisprudence, which relies 
upon the same authorities, English and Ameri- 
can — freely interchanged — for the establishment 
of the same principles of justice, I found no per- 
ceptible difference in what I may call the cardi- 
nal features of the profession between them and 
us. Their hospitality on all occasions was most 
cordial, alike in their private houses, in the Inns 
of Court, and in that great banquet which they 
gave to the Bench and Bar of the United States 
in 1900, which was promoted by that noble advo- 
cate and jurist, Lord Russell of Killowen, the 
Lord Chief Justice, and which took place on the 
very eve of his untimely death. 

While I was made to feel entirely at home 
306 



THE ENGLISH BAR 

among them, by the general resemblance and 
identity of our pursuits and surroundings, it was 
in the changes that time and circumstances have 
wrought in us rather than in them that I was 
most interested — and in the observation of which 
I think we have something to learn. 

The English barrister's relation to the business 
of his clients is always strictly and absolutely 
professional, just as much so as that of the physi- 
cian or the surgeon. 

Whether he tries or argues a cause, or revises 
a pleading or a contract, or gives an opinion on 
the facts submitted, he acts without any possible 
interest in the matter, or any relation to it other 
than the purely professional one. The rigid rules 
of the profession by which he is bound absolutely 
forbid him to take a contingent interest or share 
in any controversy in which he acts profession- 
ally, and the slightest violation of this rule would 
compel his disbarment. And so the whole com- 
munity knows, that in proportion to his skill and 
capacity and judgment, they may absolutely con- 
fide in his professional conduct, and that no pri- 
vate or personal interest in the subject of the con- 
troversy can bias him, to mislead or confuse the 
counsels of the Court. In the same way his com- 
pensation is not dependent upon the amount in- 
volved or upon the result of the controversy, but 
upon his own eminence and reputation. So that 
when I told some leading barristers that our 
Court of Appeals had decided that the amount in- 
volved and the result as to winning or losing, 

307 



THE ENGLISH BAE 

were material factors in the measurement of the 
lawyer's compensation, they fairly scouted the 
idea. 

There is no doubt that two important changes 
in our system have seriously detracted from this 
strictly professional attitude of the American 
Advocate, and laid him open to question. I mean 
the fact that we have not maintained the distinc- 
tion between the two branches of the profession, 
but every one of us is a barrister, a solicitor and 
an attorney. But the chief cause of detraction 
from our absolute independence and disin- 
terestedness as advocates, is that fatal and per- 
nicious change made several generations ago by 
statute, by which lawyers and clients are „ per- 
mitted to make any agreements they please as to 
compensation — so that contingent fees, contracts 
for shares, even contracts for half the result of a 
litigation, are permissible, and I fear not un- 
known. How can we wonder, then, if the com- 
munity implicates the lawyer who conducts a 
cause with the morale of the cause and of the 
client? If he has bargained for a share of the 
result, what answer can we make to such a 
criticism? And how can we blame the commu- 
nity when it suspects that such practices are fre- 
quent or common, and even sanctioned by emi- 
nent members of the profession, if they confound 
us all in one indistinguishable crowd, and refuse 
to accord to any of us that strictly professional 
relation to the cause which the English bar- 
rister enjoys? And how can the Courts put full 

308 



THE ENGLISH BAE 

faith in the sincerity of our labors as aids to 
them in the administration of justice, if they have 
reason to suspect us of having bargained for a 
share of the result? 

If you ask me whether there is no way out of 
this confusion of condemnation or suspicion for 
the individual lawyer, I say emphatically there 
is. 

True, we cannot go back on the habits of gen- 
erations, or repeal statutes which have imbedded 
such practices in the social habits of the people. 
But the individual advocate can persistently re- 
fuse to follow such practices, or to take a contin- 
gent fee or a share in the controversy, and I am 
old-fashioned enough to wish that every member 
of the profession who aspires to leadership, would 
take such a stand, and to believe that if he did so, 
it would promote his reputation and success in 
true professional distinction. 

For a whole generation, yes, for two genera- 
tions, we had before us a noble example of this 
moral distinction — alas, he is no longer with us — 
I refer to the late James C. Carter, who so long 
and so gloriously led us, and who I believe never 
touched a contingent fee or a share in a contro- 
versy of which he had the conduct, and was for 
all the world exactly like the best examples of 
the leaders of the English Bar. 

In another respect the English barristers have 
a great advantage over us, and one that tends to 
promote and increase the reasonable enjoyment 
of life, and that is in more frequent recreation 

309 



THE ENGLISH BAE 

and relaxation and more stated and prolonged 
holidays — holidays established by cnstom which 
has the force of law. In all the time of my bnsy 
practice in New York, we were steadily engaged 
in Court from the first Monday of October to 
the last Friday of June, with hardly an appre- 
ciable break — a few days at Thanksgiving, the 
week from Christmas to New Year's, and the le- 
gal holidays, very few in number. With these 
scanty exceptions, it was one perpetual grind of 
work for nine successive months, and the few 
lucky ones were those who had the temperament 
and the physique to stand the strain. 

But in England the Courts come in with appro- 
priate and appointed ceremonies on the twenty- 
fourth of October, and work for eight weeks, 
which brings them to Christmas and a two weeks ' 
holiday — when every barrister drops his briefs 
absolutely and quits London for the country or 
for the Continent, which can be reached in a few 
hours. Then they return and work for eight or 
ten weeks more, which brings them to the Easter 
recess, another real holiday of ten or twelve 
days, with the same advantages — another eight 
or ten weeks of work and Whitsuntide arrives, a 
third intermediate holiday, of which we know 
nothing and which we ought to borrow at once, 
and then a fourth term of eight or ten weeks of 
work brings them up to the twelfth of August, 
when the law is off on grouse, and Courts and 
barristers, King, Lords and Commons disappear 
for the long vacation of ten or eleven weeks, 

310 



THE ENGLISH BAR 

which brings them back new men for the begin- 
ning of the working year again. 

Thus, with the same or only a little more vaca- 
tion in the aggregate these frequently recurring 
holidays of substantial amount, which are thor- 
oughly availed of, relieve both judges and barris- 
ters of that protracted and unremitting strain 
and pressure which I used to find it so hard to 
bear. 

The amount of litigation in proportion to the 
population must, I think, be much less in England 
than in New York. Otherwise it would be quite 
impossible for the thirty-five judges of the High 
Court and the Lords Justices of Appeal, and the 
Judicial Committee of the House of Lords to dis- 
pose of the whole of the principal business of 
England without any serious accumulation of 
arrears, while in the State of New York, with its 
eight millions of people, we have ninety-seven 
Justices of the Supreme Court, seven Judges of 
the Court of Appeals and ten Federal Judges. 
Doubtless the County Courts in England dispose 
of more business and give greater relief to the 
High Court than is afforded by similar subordi- 
nate tribunals to our Supreme Court, but, for all 
that, the volume of business must be vastly 
greater here than there. 

It is an essential part of our system to bring 
justice home to every man's door, and it is made 
very cheap here, especially for the losing party, 
while in England litigation for the party who 
unsuccessfully and without merits prosecutes or 

311 



THE ENGLISH BAE 

defends a lawsuit, is a seriously expensive busi- 
ness, for in the exercise of the discretion vested 
in them, the judges in the adjustment of costs are 
inclined to charge the beaten party with the whole 
expense of the litigation, including the counsel 
fees paid by the other side. 

Here again comes in another unfortunate re- 
sult of our system of contingent fees which has 
resulted in blocking our calendars with thousands 
of experimental and speculative lawsuits, in ar- 
rears, in at least one of our departments for two 
or three years, which it is quite impossible for 
our judges to cope with. 

Everything in the system of English judicature 
seems to be arranged with a view to the despatch 
rather than the accumulation of business. They 
have nothing like our dismal Code of Civil Pro- 
cedure with its many thousand sections, which it- 
self in the whole history of its growth and devel- 
opment has been, and is to-day, a prolific cause 
of litigation and delay, and affords, I should 
think, an opportunity for a distinct and separate 
motion every week, from the commencement of 
the cause till its trial. Instead of that they have 
a few simple rules of practice made by the High 
Court and always under its control, and these 
are very simply administered, usually before a 
Master, after the cause is at issue — and the bar- 
rister is generally relieved of any attention to 
that part of the practice which acts so thoroughly 
upon the nerves of any lawyer who is engaged in 
great affairs. 

312 



THE ENGLISH BAE 

Our pernicious and dilatory habit of waiting 
for counsel, who are engaged elsewhere, when the 
cause is reached or called on the day assigned, is 
practically unknown, and the consequence is that 
in an important cause several counsel must be re- 
tained, so that if one is not ready, another shall 
be, and the cause proceed. 

Of course the solicitors and attorneys prepare 
briefs, and relieve the barrister of a vast amount 
of that kind of work out of Court, for which coun- 
sel with us are largely responsible. I am sure, 
however, that every conscientious barrister, from 
the moment of receiving his retainer, is ready to 
hold consultations and advise on every important 
step, but as a rule they are not troubled with in- 
terviews with parties and witnesses in prepara- 
tion for the trial. In fact, direct communication 
between the barrister who is to try the case and 
the witnesses is theoretically disallowed, and sel- 
dom happens. 

But it is in the actual conduct of the case in 
Court that the barristers derive great assistance 
and support from the prompt and efficient sys- 
tem that prevails. The judges, being appointed 
by the Government, practically selected by the 
Lord Chancellor from barristers who have been 
long in active practice in the Courts, are already 
fully qualified for the performance of judicial 
duties from the moment they enter on their ex- 
alted office, and are not only presumed to know 
the law, but generally do actually know it. Such 
a thing as a judge having to be educated upon 

313 



THE ENGLISH BAE 

the Bench, so expensive and so detrimental when 
it does happen, is utterly unknown there, and as a 
result the judge takes charge and holds control 
of the case from beginning to end. Questions of 
evidence and motions for nonsuit, which with us 
are often occasions of prolific argument, are 
promptly decided. The judge is presumed to 
know the law of evidence, and it rarely happens 
that such a question has to be more than stated 
in order to have it disposed of. Perhaps I was 
myself as great an offender as anybody in the 
consumption of time in the discussion of ques- 
tions of evidence, having often argued them by 
the hour ; and I well remember one case with Mr. 
Eoscoe Conkling, where we spent an entire day 
in the argument of a motion to nonsuit, and even 
then the Court adjourned till the next morning 
to decide it. 

In cases tried without a jury, including equity, 
probate and admiralty causes, when the judge 
has heard the evidence and the arguments, he is 
generally ready to decide it, and the pernicious 
habit which once prevailed, and I fear still pre- 
vails with us, of taking two weeks, often extended 
to four, to hand up briefs, when the judge will 
have largely forgotten the case, and will have to 
study them at his subsequent leisure, is practi- 
cally unknown, and the proceedings upon appeal 
in cases reserved are greatly facilitated by the 
appeal being heard on the judges' minutes, and 
report of the points reserved. 

If you ask me how the leaders find their way 
314 



THE ENGLISH BAK 

to the front, I should say exactly as they do with 
us. They are eliminated by a process of natural 
selection, for merit and fitness, from the whole 
body of the Bar. I have known the leaders of the 
Bar on both sides of the Atlantic, and in this 
respect the same rule prevails. There is every 
variety among them of physical, mental and moral 
qualities. No two are ever alike in personal char- 
acteristics, except in one vital and essential 
quality, which is common to them all, I mean the 
power and the will to hold on and hold out, under 
all circumstances and against all counter induce- 
ments until the goal is reached. This indomitable 
tenacity of purpose, with brains, health and char- 
acter, insures success and leadership there, as 
here. 

A very striking story told me by one of the 
gentlemen named illustrates what I mean. Some 
forty years ago, on the Northern Circuit, three 
able and ambitious young men had tried hard for 
a few years, by assiduous attendance, for business 
in the Courts, and, almost hopeless of success, they 
met and seriously discussed the question whether 
they should not give it up, and seek some other 
service, in the Colonies, or in some of the many 
avenues of employment which are open there as 
here to barristers who despair of the future in 
the direct line of the profession — but they held 
on, for life or for death, and in thirty years or 
thereabouts from the time of their discussion, 
one had become Lord Chief Justice of England, 
as Lord Eussell of Killowen, the second Lord 

315 



THE ENGLISH BAR 

High Chancellor, as Lord Herschel, and the third 
Speaker of the House of Commons, who, after an 
arduous and honorable term of service in that 
high office, now lives in retirement as Viscount 
Selby. 

The question of emoluments is always an inter- 
esting one to lawyers, and if things remain as 
they were when I went to England eight years 
ago, I should say that for professional leaders 
in the same relative position the earnings here 
and there were about the same. There is a well- 
worn story of Sir Roundell Palmer, who, as At- 
torney-General, contested against Mr. Evarts the 
Alabama claims before the Geneva Tribunal of 
Arbitration, that in one year he realized fifty 
thousand pounds, but that was adding his com- 
pensation as Attorney-General to his large and 
lucrative private practice, which is not permitted 
any longer to the Attorney-General or the Solici- 
tor-General. But such earnings there or here 
represent a prodigious and killing amount of 
work ; and the story is that an old friend, desiring 
an interview with Sir Roundell, called at his 
chambers one Thursday morning, and asked if he 
could see him. The clerk replied that if he must 
he could do so, but he would advise him not to, 
for he hadn't been in bed since Sunday night. 

So I have heard of a great Chancery barrister 
many years later realizing in one year twenty- 
eight thousand pounds, and during my stay in 
London thirty thousand pounds a year was the 
highest sum I heard ascribed to the most success- 

316 



THE ENGLISH BAE 

ful leaders of the day. Such earnings anywhere 
represent the absolute devotion of the highest 
professional qualities and the sacrifice of every- 
thing else to the largest interests of the commer- 
cial world. These figures compare very favor- 
ably with the best I ever knew or heard of, while 
I was actually engaged in steady practice. Since 
my return, I have heard of fabulous sums re- 
ceived by lawyers, either as shares agreed upon, 
or from great corporations or estates, as rewards 
for very moderate services. For the credit of 
the profession, I decline to believe such stories, 
for in the long run nothing is so damaging to us 
as a profession as the spirit of commercialism — 
the Wall street notion, that money is the only 
thing worth striving for, an idea which when it 
once gets hold of a man unfits him for true lead- 
ership, and when it once gets hold of the profes- 
sion is sure to demoralize it. 

I have no time to discuss here to-day the much- 
vexed question of the comparative merits of legal 
education here and in England — but from what 
I have seen of the leading English barristers, 
what splendid men they are physically, mentally 
and morally, how learned and broadly educated, 
accomplished and thoroughly equipped, I should 
say that the system which has produced such men, 
the combined results of education at the universi- 
ties and the great Inns of Court, ought not hastily 
to be exchanged for another as a training for the 
English Bar. 

Perhaps some day the Inns of Court will com- 
317 



THE ENGLISH BAR 

bine their splendid resources to create and main- 
tain a great University of Law, to which men of 
all nations, races and languages will resort for 
legal training, but although this was strongly 
urged upon them, I believe by Lord Russell and 
other prominent benchers, the time for such a 
serious change has not yet come. 

Those splendid Inns of Court to which I have 
so often referred — for it is impossible to speak 
of English law or English lawyers without con- 
stant reference to them — afford to our brethren 
who belong to them and to whom they belong, a 
home around which their affections centre, and 
places and occasions of social and fraternal in- 
tercourse utterly unknown to us. 

As the sole authority through which admission 
to the Bar can be obtained, as seats of study 
and learning in preparation for professional life, 
as the custodians and guardians of all the history 
and traditions of the law, they command the loyal 
affection and devotion of all their members. As 
the great nurseries of common law and of equity, 
and identified in their annals with the whole prog- 
ress of justice and of civilization in England, es- 
tablished already for centuries, while we were yet 
a component part of the English nation, I regard 
them as the common property and the common 
pride of all lawyers the world over who speak the 
English tongue. There our predecessors in the 
Bar of England have been working out by patient 
industry, and with ever advancing knowledge 
those principles which underlie the liberties of 

318 



THE ENGLISH BAR 

England and America alike, and the debt of grati- 
tude we owe them for that long service cannot be 
overstated. What are those absolute principles 
which thus lie at the foundation of our common 
civilization? That there is no such thing as 
absolute power, that King, Lords and Commons, 
Presidents, Congress, Courts and people are alike 
subject to the law, that before its supreme 
majesty all men are equal; that no man can be 
punished or deprived of any of his rights except 
by the edict of the law, pronounced by indepen- 
dent tribunals which are themselves subject to 
the law; that every man's house is his castle, and 
though the winds and the storms may enter it, the 
King or the President cannot; that our govern- 
ment on both sides of the water is, in the sub- 
lime words of the great Sidney, " a government 
of laws and not of men. ' ' 

You will not wonder, then, that in common with 
all other lawyers I felt an immediate and per- 
sonal interest in those cradles of the law in which, 
before America was discovered, those ultimate 
principles of right and justice which our fathers 
brought over with Magna Charta and the Peti- 
tion of Eight were brought into being, and already 
in the way of final establishment. 

Those graceful and magnificent halls, rich in 
beauty and teeming with great traditions, about 
which the memories of all that has been great 
and noble in our profession for five centuries still 
lingers, cannot but have an ennobling and inspir- 
ing influence upon all who frequent them i The 

319 



THE! ENGLISH BAK 

footsteps of American lawyers on arriving in 
England naturally tnrn first to them, and often 
as I haunted them I always met and heard of my 
countrymen there before me. Their unbounded 
hospitality often gladdened my long stay among 
them. On Grand Night in each term of Court 
when the Benchers of each Inn assemble within 
those noble walls to entertain their friends and 
their members and students, with the por- 
traits of the great judges of the past whom 
they claim as their own, looking down upon 
them, and the shields and arms of their 
treasurers for centuries surrounding them, 
they seemed to me to represent and embody the 
living spirit of our law, holding now, for the time 
being, and for transmission to future generations, 
all the rich heritage of the past. And when as a 
tribute to the American Bar and in demonstra- 
tion of their fraternal sympathy and affection 
they made me, too, a Bencher of the Middle Tem- 
ple, to represent you all, and in the same spirit 
bade me farewell at Lincoln's and Gray's Inns, 
I felt that my professional life had not been 
wholly in vain. 

My conclusion, from a fair knowledge of both 
countries, is that in the law, as in every other 
element of our common civilization, each nation 
has yet much to learn from the other, and that to 
that end we ought studiously on both sides to cul- 
tivate more frequent and constant intercourse and 
a better knowledge of each other, and no profes- 

320 



THE) ENGLISH BAR 

sion can do so much as ours to bring about this 
happy consummation. 

I also became thoroughly convinced that for 
each country its own system of legal administra- 
tion and of professional life, as it stands to-day, 
is better than any abrupt or violent effort at re- 
form would be. That system for each nation has 
been slowly evolved out of social usage, and com- 
mon law and statute in the course of centuries, 
and any sudden changes would be more likely to 
mar than to mend it. But we may hope on both 
sides, by the friendly interchange of ideas from 
time to time, to gain much in the way of progress 
and improvement. 



321 



CHAELES FOLLEN McKIM 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

Address delivered at the McKim memorial meeting, at The New 
Theatre, New York, November 23, 1909. 

WE have assembled in this wonderful hall to- 
day, at the combined invitation of all the 
organizations for the promotion of art in New 
York, to pay a tribute of respect and affection to 
a great artist, a noble gentleman, a self-sacrificing 
and public-spirited citizen, and the recognized 
leader for many years of a powerful and brilliant 
profession. I deem it a signal privilege and 
honor, as a lifelong friend of Mr. McKim, to 
have been asked by this great body of his pro- 
fessional colleagues and disciples to address this 
interested and sympathetic company of his ad- 
mirers. Interested and sympathetic, I know you 
must all be, for it was impossible to come into 
contact with Mr. McKim without loving and hon- 
oring him, or to be even the most casual observer 
of his work without some appreciation and admi- 
ration of that. 

We have all known him in the zenith of his 
fame — long recognized at home and abroad as the 
foremost of American architects — creating in 
rapid succession building after building, public 
and private, of singular dignity, simplicity and 
beauty; surrounded by all the signs of affluence 

325 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

and luxury, consulted as the leading authority on 
all matters of taste and art, with all sorts of 
honors and distinctions heaped upon him, and yet 
always as simple as a child, as modest and gentle 
as a woman — shunning publicity and shocked at 
all ostentation. 

It would be interesting to know from what be- 
ginnings all this greatness, this gentleness, this 
instinct for beauty, came. Some day I hope his 
life will be written by some competent hand. 

Recently there were placed in my hands some 
letters of his to his father, written in his twen- 
tieth year — probably before any person present 
here to-day had any knowledge of him — which 
seemed to me to shed much light on the formation 
of his manly and beautiful character. 

We know something of the father and the 
mother, too — a sturdy abolitionist and a famous 
Quaker beauty. It was from her, no doubt, that 
he got his striking grace and delicacy of feature. 
They were both as brave and fearless as they 
were plain and simple in life and manner. To 
show their faith by their works, they accompa- 
nied the widow of John Brown to Virginia to 
bring home his mangled body, which was to lie 
moldering in the ground while his soul went 
marching on. 

The letters are from Cambridge in the summer 
and fall of 1866, where the boy was searching in 
vain in the vacation for a teacher to coach him 
in chemistry and mathematics to enable him to 
enter the Lawrence Scientific School in the Min- 

326 



CHAELES FOLLEN McKIM 

ing Department. Mining engineering was what 
lie was bent upon, with no more idea of becoming 
an architect than of studying divinity. 

The Quaker discipline and spirit is stamped 
upon every line of his letters. They are ad- 
dressed to " Dear Home," and they reveal on 
every page the simplicity, the earnestness, the 
narrow means and self-denial of that home and of 
the writer. Simplicity, quietness, self-restraint 
— were not these his guiding motives all through 
life 1 Are they not the very things that the name 
of McKim, Mead & White stands for still? Truly 
the boy was father of the man. He uses the 
Quaker style and vernacular: "Father, does 
thee think I had better come home to Thanksgiv- 
ing, or will it be spending too much? I can wait 
till January if thee thinks it best," but " Do send 
mother to see me ' ' is his constant refrain. ' ' Dear 
mother, thee must come! " His prevailing 
thought seems to have been how best to ease the 
burden of his education on the lightly furnished 
family purse. What he seems to have intended 
was one year in the Scientific School and then 
two years in Paris — not at all at the Beaux Arts, 
but in the School of Mines, where the education 
for his life 's calling would be cheaper and better. 
The spur of necessity was the goad to his ambi- 
tion, as it always has been to most Americans 
who succeed. Evidently he had no love for mathe- 
matics or mining, but he could toil terribly, even 
at that. What it was in that one short year at 
Cambridge that roused in his soul the dormant 

327 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

love of art and passion for beauty, we cannot tell. 
But kindled they were, and at the end of the year 
he went straight to Paris and to the Beaux Arts 
to study architecture, and then to travel as long 
as he could and feast his soul on all the wonder- 
ful and beautiful buildings which abound in 
France and Italy. And at last he came home, 
fully equipped for the arduous and fascinating 
labors that were to fill and crown the thirty years 
of his successful and brilliant career. In architec- 
ture, as in every other profession, opportunity 
counts for much, and he found a golden oppor- 
tunity awaiting him. 

When Lincoln at Gettysburg, in the middle of 
the war, said : ' ' This nation under God shall have 
a new birth of freedom," even he perhaps little 
dreamed of the marvellous growth and develop- 
ment which that new birth should usher in. Not 
only was slavery to be abolished and the Union 
to be rebuilt upon imperishable foundations, but 
upon these was to arise a wholly new America, 
of a power and grandeur unknown before, and 
pregnant with a progress and prosperity never 
approached by any nation in the same period of 
time. The national energy and enterprise were 
to expand and spring forward by leaps and 
bounds. A really new people, fired by the stimu- 
lus of success in a great war on which the salva- 
tion of the nation was at stake, were to grapple 
with the overwhelming problem of national ex- 
pansion. New cities and States were to be foun- 
ded and the old ones rebuilt, and art and archi- 

328 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

tecture especially were to contribute to this devel- 
opment as they had never done before. 

Some of you are old enough to remember how 
New York looked at the close of the Civil War. 
From the Battery to Forty-second Street it was 
covered with buildings in the construction of 
which stability and utility had been consulted, 
but very rarely beauty at all. Architecture was 
at a very low ebb, and architects were at a de- 
cided discount. Scattered through the city were 
many good churches and some good public build- 
ings, and there were two actual gems which still 
exist to challenge admiration — St. Paul's Chapel 
and our delightful old City Hall, which has, I be- 
lieve, but one blemish, that while all the rest of 
the building is of beautiful marble, the rear wall 
was of brown stone, it being thought a hundred 
years ago that nobody would get so far uptown as 
to see it. But these two noble examples had been 
so far forgotten and overlooked that our new 
Court-House, hideous in its composition as in its 
history, and the new Post-Office, another horror, 
were built right over against them to hide them 
from view; and at the other end of the city the 
grim Croton reservoir frowned upon us, on the 
very spot where the New Library now lights up 
the whole surrounding region. 

But for the great fire of London, which laid 
waste a whole city for him to rebuild, Sir Christo- 
pher Wren would probably never have been 
heard of except as the worthy but obscure profes- 
sor of astronomy at Oxford. No other architect 

329 



CHAKLES FOLLEN McKIM 

in modern history had such an opportunity as 
that. But McKim and his contemporaries, dis- 
ciples, and followers had their opportunity, too, 
when it fell to their hands to reconstruct our 
somewhat ugly and obstinately commonplace 
city, with its long rows of plain and uniform 
brownstone fronts, and adorn it with so many 
dignified and beautiful structures which we now 
take pleasure in showing to strangers. 

The architects of the last thirty years have not 
only built for us a noble city, but have raised 
their own profession into a brotherhood which 
almost outranks all the others in efficiency and 
utility. 

When McKim came home in 1872 to offer his 
services to his countrymen as an architect of rec- 
ognized qualifications, only a very few of the 
many societies which have been united in inviting 
you here to-day to do honor to his memory had 
come into existence. The Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, which heads the list, had but just been 
founded, and was leading a precarious existence, 
with no idea of the possibility of its ever attain- 
ing its present splendid position. 

I shall not in this presence undertake to draw 
any comparison between him and any other of 
his brethren, or to measure or analyze his merits. 
I shall leave all that to his professional brethren. 
I only know that, by common consent of them all, 
he was for years recognized, admired, and hon- 
ored as their leader and master; that many of 
the chief ornaments of this and other cities are 

330 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

his personal work, or that of the firm of which 
he was the head and moving spirit ; and that not 
only in his own country, but in England and in 
Italy, the highest authorities in art have selected 
him to receive their special honors. And how 
modestly and meekly he bore all those accumu- 
lating honors! I remember when he came to 
London in 1903, when at the very top of his pro- 
fession, to receive the Royal Gold Medal for 
services to architecture the world over, how mod- 
estly and timidly he bore himself. He was really 
all of a tremble, and nothing would do but that 
Mr. Henry White and I, who had been his friends 
for many years, must stand by him through what 
he regarded as a terrible ordeal, and so we held 
up his arms. And when it was all over, and he 
began to receive the congratulations of his friends 
from home, he cabled back: " Thanks! many 
thanks! but I still wear the same hat! " And 
that was the beauty of it and of him. No matter 
what happened, no matter what he achieved in 
the way of success and fame, he always wore the 
same hat — his head never swelled; he carried it 
all off with absolute Quaker simplicity. It re- 
quired all his early training to bear meekly the 
flood of applause and adulation which, with many 
men, would have called for a hat of colossal pro- 
portions. 

When he took into his hands the British Gold 
Medal, he said that he accepted it as an honor due, 
not to himself, but to his profession in America, 
whose representative he was proud to be, and I 

331 



CHAELES FOLLEN McKIM 

am sure that he would not be content to-day if we 
failed to recognize the encouragement which he 
received from those who went before him, and 
the constant aid and support of those who shared 
his labors and his triumphs. It is impossible to- 
day to forget his indebtedness to Eichardson and 
Hunt, those two brilliant masters and examples 
to whom he was proud to declare his allegiance 
and loyalty. It was in Eichardson 's office that he 
began his professional life, and although few 
traces of the influence of that distinguished fore- 
runner are visible in his work, he never ceased to 
be grateful to him for smoothing his first steps. 
And working side by side in the same city with 
Hunt, that ardent and intrepid spirit whom he 
cheerfully recognized so long as leader and chief, 
it was impossible but that each should give much 
to the other — much aid, much encouragement, 
and much inspiration. Let us not forget that 
Eichardson and Hunt led and blazed the way in 
which McKim so modestly and triumphantly fol- 
lowed. 

Another important factor in McKim 's lifework 
was the founding and maintenance of the pro- 
fessional firm in which the names and labors of 
Mr. White and Mr. Mead were indissolubly linked 
with his own. For more than twenty-five years 
they were like brothers, brain to brain and heart 
to heart, sharing each other's labors and designs 
and triumphs. It was impossible often to tell 
where McKim's work ended and the others' be- 
gan, or how much of any given piece of work was 

332 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

done by the one or the other, or which contributed 
the more important part. At a great banquet, 
when Burnham, who was presiding, attributed to 
McKim the great merit of Madison Square Gar- 
den, McKim is said to have interjected, " White," 
and that was the only word he uttered on that 
occasion. McKim always imputed to his partners 
a full and equal share of the credit and merit of 
what was done in their joint names, and during 
the whole existence of the firm no single piece 
of work was undertaken except in their joint 
names, but upon almost every piece of their joint 
work the impress of McKim's peculiar person- 
ality and fine genius is indelibly stamped. The 
truth is that the three stood together at the head 
of the profession, and the city and the nation owe 
to their joint labors an everlasting debt of grati- 
tude. Each relied upon the other, and their mu- 
tual devotion and admiration knew no limits. 

And there was another personal association and 
ever-abiding influence which McKim enjoyed in 
all his later years — in the friendship of Saint- 
Gaudens. I do not suppose there ever was a 
closer union, or a more active sympathy, between 
three great artists of kindred tastes and the same 
exalted aims, as that which bound together Mc- 
Kim, Saint-Gaudens, and White — working to- 
gether, helping each other, criticizing each other, 
and all intent together upon the same end — to 
elevate the artistic standard which it was the 
great object of their lives to promote and ad- 
vance. All three have passed away together in 

333 



CHAELES FOLLEN McKIM 

three short years. As they were united in life, 
they were not far divided in death, a triple calam- 
ity and loss to the city and the country. 

The secret of McKim's professional eminence 
was not far to seek. There was nothing strange 
or providential about it. 

Emerson attributes to the greatest architects 
a sort of special divine inspiration: 

The hand that rounded Peter 's dome 
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome 
Wrought in a sad sincerity. 
Himself from God he could not free. 
He molded wiser than he knew; 
The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

And another poet, two hundred years before Em- 
erson, had explained the first miracle in a similar 
figure of speech: 

The conscious water saw its God and blushed. 

But, in the sober prose of modern life, conscious 
stone is as rare as conscious water, and archi- 
tects must work out their own salvation. Mc- 
Kim did this by the hardest of hard work, by con- 
centrating his whole mind and heart and feeling 
upon his work as an architect, never turning to 
the right or the left, or trying his hand at any 
other art. 

Evelyn, writing from Eome, says : ' ' Bernini, 
the Florentine sculptor, architect, painter, and 
poet, a little before my coming to Eome, gave a 

334 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

public opera wherein he painted the scenes, cut 
the statues, invented the engines, composed the 
music, writ the comedy, and built the theatre." 
And it has been happily said of Michelangelo that 
he wore the four crowns of architecture, sculp- 
ture, painting, and poetry. 

McKim was satisfied with the crown of archi- 
tecture only, and to win and wear it he gave his 
life 's blood. 

I asked Mr. Mead what he thought was Mc- 
Kim 's chief motive and object in life, and he said: 
" Perfection in whatever he undertook to do." 

To this single lofty aim he devoted all his pow- 
ers — his fertile imagination, a memory richly 
stored with treasures, a patient study of all the 
best examples of ancient and foreign art, a self- 
control which enabled him to persuade and con- 
trol others, an insatiable love of beauty, and that 
sweet reasonableness which was an essential part 
of his nature. And with all this, in spite of occa- 
sional moods and apparent lapses, he had that 
unyielding tenacity of purpose which kept the 
end in view always from the beginning, and 
which is the invariable trait of leadership in all 
professions. 

But, besides being a great artist, McKim was 
a great educator. The influence which his work 
and the work of his firm exercised upon the pub- 
lic taste and judgment was of incalculable value. 
Scattered through many cities, each building 
they designed was an object-lesson to the public 
in dignity, harmony and beauty. How can even 

335 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

the casual observer stop to gaze at such build- 
ings as the Boston Library, the Rhode Island 
State House, or the Columbia or Morgan Library 
without being deeply impressed? I am sure these 
are creating an enthusiasm for beautiful build- 
ings, which is sure to grow and never to die out 
among us. And yet I fear that not one in five 
of this company of his admirers has gone out of 
his or her way as far as Seventh Avenue to study 
the last and perhaps most marvellous of all their 
works, the new Pennsylvania Station. 

I must leave it to others to tell you how much 
he has done to elevate the standard and the dig- 
nity and the value of his own profession — how 
large a proportion of the younger architects of 
to-day have graduted from his office, and have 
carried with them into actual work throughout 
the country the impress and the influence of his 
large imagination and his abiding inspiration. 
You will hear from them, I doubt not, of his ever- 
living sense of public duty and responsibility; 
how freely he gave of his time, his thought, and 
his influence to the great work of the improve- 
ment of the Capitol and the laying out of the city 
of Washington; and, more than all the rest, how, 
remembering the difficulties that beset his own 
career at the outset, he labored in season and out 
of season in the founding of the American Acad- 
emy at Rome, which in life and in death was the 
darling of his hopes. Who knows but that those 
hopes may be speedily and finally realized and 
completed by some timely helping hand? 

336 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

The name of an architect is generally lost in 
his works. Of all the great buildings and struc- 
tures that survive from a remote past, only a 
very few have brought with them the names of 
the great geniuses who must have designed them. 
" Here lies one," wrote Keats in his own epi- 
taph, " whose name is writ in water.' ' But those 
whose names are writ in stone are hardly as last- 
ing. I doubt whether one in fifty of this audience 
can give the name of the truly eminent architect 
who designed our City Hall at about the time that 
Keats, whose fame has ever since been growing, 
was born. Now and then there is a signal excep- 
tion. The name of Agrippa, on the portico of the 
Pantheon, has kept his fame alive as a great 
builder for centuries after his military achieve- 
ments are forgotten. The ashes of Wren, happy 
in death as in life, enshrined in the great cathe- 
dral that he restored, surrounded by what re- 
mains of the beautiful churches that he rebuilt, 
are marked with that matchless inscription: " Si 
monumentum quaeris, circumspice." " If you 
seek for his monument, look around you." Hunt's 
statue upon the roof of Mr. Vanderbilt's house — 
his masterpiece — so unique and characteristic, 
will keep his features in view as long as that 
beautiful house shall stand; but his monogram 
" R. M. H." must be stamped upon it to tell fu- 
ture generations who he was. Indeed, there is no 
sign manual for architects as there is always for 
painters. But McKim's spirit and memory will 
survive, not only in the masterly and beautiful 

337 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

works of his hands, but in the new life that he 
inspired in his great profession, in the valued 
services that he rendered to his country, in the 
ever-growing idealism which he fostered and en- 
couraged in the American people. 

Perhaps this is hardly the occasion to dwell 
upon those innate traits and qualities that made 
him so dear and precious to his friends, and his 
loss so deeply and widely lamented. But in truth 
he was one of the most charming personalities 
that America has ever known. Wherever he 
came, he always brought light and warmth and 
sympathy, which seemed to flow from him, 
whether he spoke or kept silent. It was impossi- 
ble to know him and not to love him, and, to bor- 
row the language of St. Paul, it may truly be said 
of him: 

" Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; 
if there be any virtue and if there be any 
praise,' ' we think of these things as all embodied 
and transfigured in the life and character of 
Charles Follen McKim. 



338 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

Address delivered at the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of 

the First Training School for Nurses, New York, 

May 18, 1910. 

I CONSIDER it a very great privilege to be 
permitted to stand here for a few minutes 
to speak about Florence Nightingale. How could 
this great convention of the nurses of America, 
gathered from all parts of the country, represent- 
ing a thousand schools of trained nurses ; repre- 
senting more than fifty thousand graduates of 
those schools, and more than twenty-five thou- 
sand pupils of those schools to-day — how could 
they better close their conference than by coming 
here to-night, to celebrate the foundation, by 
that great woman, of the one first great training 
school for nurses, which was the model of them 
all? And how could she, that venerable woman, 
be more highly honored than by this gathering, 
in a distant land, of these representatives of the 
profession which she really founded and created, 
to do her homage! I hope that before we close 
our proceedings this evening, we shall authorize 
our presiding officer to send her a cable of affec- 
tion and gratitude for all the great work she has 
done, not only from all the nurses of America, but 
to testify the admiration of the entire American 
people for her great record, and her noble life. 

341 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

One word as to the place and date of her birth. 
She was born in the beautiful city of Florence, 
where the steps of Americans always love to lin- 
ger, in the very first year of the reign of George 
the Fourth. She lived in honor and triumph 
through the succeeding reigns of William the 
Fourth, of Victoria, and of Edward the Seventh, 
and at last united with the rest of her countrymen 
to hail the accession of George the Fifth who, 
I am sure, values her among his subjects quite 
as highly as he does the most renowned statesmen 
and greatest soldiers among them. 

She was born in the first administration of 
James Monroe, the fifth president of the United 
States — before the Monroe doctrine had ever yet 
been thought of. She has lived through the en- 
tire terms of the twenty succeeding presidents, 
and is now cherished in the hearts of the Ameri- 
can people as one of the great heroines of the 
race. 

As there were great heroes before Agamemnon, 
so she would be the last to wish us to deny or 
ignore the fact that there were splendid nurses 
engaged in the work, even before she was born. 
Not trained nurses, nursing according to the mod- 
ern school of the Nightingale system, but women, 
ladies, refined, delicate, accomplished, giving 
themselves to the service of the sick and suffer- 
ing. And I believe we ought always to acknowl- 
edge the debt of gratitude that the world owes to 
the great Roman Catholic Church for the Sisters 
of Mercy whom for centuries it was sending out 

342 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

for the relief and succor of the sick and suffering 
in all parts of the world. It has been truly said 
that for centuries the Eoman Catholic community 
was training and setting apart holy women to 
minister to the sick and poor in their own homes, 
and had hospitals supplied with the same type of 
nurses. A large number of these women were 
ladies of birth and breeding, who worked for the 
good of their souls and the welfare of their 
church; while all received proper education and 
training, and abjured the world for the religious 
life. Now all you have to add to that character is 
the discipline and special training and organiza- 
tion which Florence Nightingale contributed to 
this great profession, to bring into view the 
trained nurse as she is to-day. 

This woman of great brains, of large heart, of 
wonderfully comprehensive faculties, appears to 
have been born a nurse. If the stories we hear of 
her in the nursery are true, that was literally so ; 
because they tell us that her dolls were always in 
very delicate health, and had to be daily put to 
bed and nursed and petted, with all possible care ; 
and that the next morning they were restored to 
health, only to become ill again for her service the 
next night. And her sister's dolls — she was less 
careful of them — suffered all kinds of broken 
limbs, and were subjected to amputation and 
splinting and decapitation; and Florence was on 
hand always to restore those broken fragments 
to their original integrity. 

She had every possible advantage to make her 
343 



FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 

what she afterwards came to be. She was born 
in that most interesting phase of English society 
— in English country life — where for centuries it 
has been the rule that the lord of the manor, the 
squire in his mansion, the leading person of the 
region and his family, have the responsibility 
always upon them to take care of the sick and 
suffering among all their neighbors. She was 
trained in that school; and one of her first ex- 
periences was to visit with her mother the poor 
and the sick of all the neighboring region. 

And she had a magnificent education. She was 
not averse to the pleasures of society; but she 
fortunately had a father who believed in disci- 
pline, and he gave her the finest education known 
to that day. Not only was she thoroughly 
trained in Greek and Latin and mathematics, 
but in French and German and Italian, and 
I do not suppose there was any young woman 
of her time who was better or more brilliantly 
educated than this woman, who was to become 
the leading nurse of the world. 

She was brought up to believe in work and 
training. And would you know the secret of her 
success; would you realize the rule of her life? 
Let me give it to you in her own words. " I 
would say," she says, " I would say to all young 
ladies who are called to any particular vocation, 
qualify yourself for it, as a man does for his 
work. Don't think you can undertake it other- 
wise. Submit yourself to the rules of business, 
as men do, by which alone you can make God's 

344 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

business succeed." And again she says: 
"Three-fourths of the whole mischief in women's 
lives arises from their excepting themselves from 
the rules of training considered needful for 
men. ' ' 

Besides this, she had every possible advantage 
in the way of association. Early in life, as a 
very young girl, or young woman, she made the 
intimate acquaintance of Elizabeth Frye, who 
had already for many years been visiting the sick 
in the prisons and had established, under her old- 
fashioned Quaker garb, such an immense reputa- 
tion as a reformer of prison life. And through 
Elizabeth Frye, she fell in, fortunately, with the 
Fliedners, Theodore and Fredericka Fliedner, 
who had established at Kaiserwerth in Germany 
a real training school for nurses ; and it was the 
delight of her life, that she, an accomplished lady, 
went to that training school of the Fliedners, on 
the banks of the Rhine, and labored hard, adopt- 
ing the garb, following the habits, and associating 
on terms of absolute equality with the nurses who 
were there being trained, all of whom, but her- 
self, I believe, were of the peasant class; and 
came out of it, after a few months, knowing as 
much about nursing as it was possible for any 
woman then to know. 

Then she visited the hospitals of all the great 
countries of Europe, and among others, she spent 
some weeks, or months, with the Sisters of St. 
Vincent De Paul, that splendid Catholic institu- 
tion where some of those nurses, such as I have 

345 



FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 

described to you, were already gathered, and 
there she added to her wealth of knowledge and 
richness of experience. 

She recognized no religious differences. Cath- 
olic and Protestant were both alike to her. The 
real object of her life; the real object that she 
had in view in influencing other women was how 
best she might help them to benefit mankind. 

The English hospitals of that day could not, by 
any chance, be compared with those upon the 
continent which she had visited. The character 
of the nurses was absolutely beneath contempt. 
Let me read you from a very authoritative state- 
ment what was the truth about them : ' ' The nurs- 
ing in our hospitals was largely in the hands of 
the coarsest type of women ; not only in training, 
but coarse in feeling, and even coarser morally. 
There was little to counteract their baneful in- 
fluence, and the atmosphere of the institutions, 
which as the abode of the sick and dying had 
special need of spiritual and elevating influences, 
was of a degrading character. The habitual 
drunkenness of these women was then proverbial, 
while the dirt and disorder rampant in the ward 
were calculated to breed disease. The profes- 
sion — if the nursing of that day can claim a title 
so dignified — had such a stigma attached to it, no 
decent woman cared to enter it ; and if she did, it 
was more than likely she would lose her char- 
acter. ' ' 

Now, she had to contrast with this the splendid 
discipline and training that was maintained at 

346 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

Kaiserwerth, and the very fine character of the 
nurses whom she had seen in these Catholic insti- 
tutions abroad. She had acquired a thorough 
training and was ready to become a true pioneer 
in the profession to which she was to give her 
life. She wrote a book about her experiences at 
Kaiserwerth. It shows that she was a woman in 
every sense of the word, full of sensibility. She 
never married; but although she never married 
herself, she approved of it. Let me read you a 
few words from her own book. In her descrip- 
tion and reminiscences of Kaiserwerth, she says : 
' ' It has become the fashion of late to cry up old 
maids, and inveigh against marriage as the voca- 
tion of all women; to declare that a single life 
is as happy as a married one, if people would but 
think so ; so is the air as good a medium for fish 
as water, if they did but know how to live in it. 
So she could be single and well content. But hith- 
erto we have not found that young English 
women have been convinced, and we must con- 
fess that in the present state of things their hor- 
ror of being old maids seems justified.' ' 

So you see, it was not without a full apprecia- 
tion of all that goes to make home life tender and 
happy that she turned her back upon matrimony, 
and gave it up to nursing and caring for the sick 
and suffering. 

She was fortunate at every step of her career. 
She was the immediate neighbor, down there on 
the borders of Wiltshire, of the famous Sydney 
Herbert, who afterwards became the war minister 

347 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

of the day, at the time of the Crimean war, and at 
his splendid ancestral home, Wilton House, she 
was a frequent visitor ; she was well liked by that 
household and by all who knew her. Her training 
told; her education told; her character told. Let 
me read you a wonderful prophecy that was made 
about her, long before the Crimean war broke out, 
long before she had shown the world what was in 
her, and what she could do. This verse is by Ada, 
Countess of Lovelace, the daughter of Byron; 
and I call it a wonderful prophecy: 

In future years, in distant climes, 

Should war 's dread strife its victims claim ; 

Should pestilence unchecked, betimes, 

Strike more than swords, than cannon maim ; 

Then readers of these truthful rhymes 

Will trace her progress through undying fame. 

It is not often that you will find in history such 
a prophecy as that, so absolutely realized within 
a few short years. 

Then came the breaking out of the Crimean 
war. As Colonel Hoff told you, twenty-five thou- 
sand English soldiers landed at Scutari. And 
such a state of things, I won 't say never has been 
heard of, because it is often heard of in the out- 
break of many a war. War often finds a nation 
utterly unprepared to engage in it. There were 
no ambulances, no nurses, no means provided for 
caring for the wounded and suffering soldiers as 
they were brought in from the fields of battle. 

348 



FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 

Fortunately we had a great war correspondent 
at the Crimea in those days — we afterwards knew 
him here, when he wrote the dispatches about our 
battle of Bull Run— Mr. William Howard Russell, 
as he was then called, who spoke in clarion notes 
to the men, and especially to the women of Eng- 
land, making an appeal which reached the ears 
of this wonderful woman, and made her the hero- 
ine of her age. Let me read you one sentence of 
Russell 's appeal. After describing the horrible 
state of things that existed at the Crimea, and the 
shameful want of preparation for the care of the 
soldiers, he says : ' ' Are there no devoted women 
amongst our people, willing to go forth to minis- 
ter to the sick and suffering soldiers of the east, 
in the hospitals of Scutari? Are there none of 
the daughters of England, at this stormy hour of 
night, ready for such a work? France has sent 
forth her Sisters of Mercy unsparingly, and they 
are even now by the bedsides of the wounded and 
dying, giving what woman's hand alone can give 
of comfort and relief. Must we fall far below 
the French in self-sacrifice and devotedness in a 
work which Christ so signally blessed, as done to 
Himself, ' I was sick and ye visited me ' I " 

And a lady, the wife of an officer, wrote from 
the seat of war : ' ' Could you see the scenes that 
we are daily witnessing, you would indeed be dis- 
tressed. Every corner is filled with the sick and 
wounded. If I am able to do some little good I 
hope I shall not be obliged to leave. Just now 
my time is occupied in cooking for the wounded. 

349 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

Three doors from me is an officer's wife who de- 
votes herself to cooking for the sick. There are 
no female nurses here, which decidedly there 
should be. The French have sent fifty Sisters of 
Mercy, who, I need hardly say, are devoted to 
the work. We are glad to hear that some efforts 
are being made at home." 

Miss Nightingale was one of the first to 
respond to that appeal. And yet there was hos- 
tile objection from many quarters: from official 
quarters, where it was thought that the present 
regimen, the present organization, was good 
enough, and could do all the work; from social 
sources, for whom Mrs. Grundy spoke, " Why, 
certainly it cannot be proper for young women 
— young ladies — to go as nurses in a soldiers' 
hospital, of all things in the world ! Too horrible 
to think of ! " 

There was a great deal of that sort of opposi- 
tion; and there was religious opposition, too. 
When she made up the band of thirty-seven 
nurses, which Colonel Hoff has spoken of as her 
first contingent with whom she went to the Cri- 
mea, there were ten Catholic Sisters of Mercy, 
twelve Church of England Sisters, I believe, and 
then there were some who belonged to neither or- 
ganization; and the religious people took it up, 
and they said, ' ' She is evidently going to the Cri- 
mea to convert the soldiers to the Eoman Catho- 
lic Church; " and others said, " No, that isn't so; 
don't you see she is taking some that are neither 
Catholic nor Episcopalian! We really believe 

350 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

that she belongs to that horrible sect, the Uni- 
tarians! " 

Even Punch, who always represents the cur- 
rent feeling of the day, made a little light of her, 
with mingled admiration and raillery. Let me 
read you two of his verses, in honor of " The 
Lady Birds,' ' as they were called in London, be- 
fore they started for the seat of war. 

THE NIGHTINGALE'S SONG TO A SICK SOLDIER 

Listen, soldier, to the tale of the tender nightingale ; 

It is a charm that soon will ease your wounds so cruel. 
Singing my song for your pain, in a sympathetic strain, 

With a jug of lemonade and gruel, 
Singing succor to the brave, and a rescue from the 
grave ; 

Hear the Nightingale sing that goes to the Crimea. 
Tis a Nightingale as tender in her heart as in her song, 

To carry out her golden idea. 

When this terrible state of things was disclosed 
by the letters of Russell and* other news that came 
from the seat of war, the government was as 
horror-stricken as the people, and so were Mr. 
Sydney Herbert, the life-long friend of Florence 
Nightingale, and Mrs. Herbert, who was also one 
of her friends. Mr. Herbert, who was responsi- 
ble for the administration of military affairs, said 
to his wife, ' ' We must send for Florence ! ' ' And 
then a most singular coincidence happened. He 
wrote her a most serious and dignified letter, 
pointing out the necessity of sending a band of 

351 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

nurses, composed of capable and courageous 
women ; and lie said to her, l ' It all depends upon 
you ; if our plan is to succeed, you must lead it. ' ' 
And without pressing her unduly, he put it be- 
fore her as a matter of conscience and duty. I 
believe that letter was written on the fifteenth of 
October, 1854, when the first horrible news came 
from the front. What I call the remarkable co- 
incidence was that on the same day, without know- 
ing anything about the writing of that letter, 
Florence Nightingale was writing unsolicited, to 
Sydney Herbert, the Secretary of War, offering 
her services to lead a band of nurses to the front. 
Time would fail me if I undertook to tell you 
the frightful condition of things she found when 
she got there. Doubtless you have all read of it. The 
great Barracks Hospital of Scutari was filled with 
thousands and thousands of sick and wounded men 
who had been brought from the seat of war, with- 
out nurses, without suitable food, without a laun- 
dry, without the possibility of a change of clothes, 
without a kitchen for the preparation of proper 
food, with no possible conveniences or appliances 
for the care of the sick and the wounded. The 
descriptions are too horrible to realize or to re- 
peat. She found these three or four thousand 
men in this great hospital, which had been a bar- 
racks and had been converted, off-hand, into a 
hospital — a place for the deposit of these poor 
bodies of the sick and wounded; and that was 
about all that had been done for them before 
Miss Nightingale arrived. They had had no medi- 

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FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 

cal attendance from the time they left the front, 
many days before; they had had no change of 
clothing, nor the possibility of a bath or a clean 
shirt. 

And this woman, with her thirty-seven nnrses, 
came among them. It was chaos! confusion, 
worse confounded ! She put to use her wonderful 
powers of organization, and in two months she 
had that hospital in absolute control. A kitchen 
was established and a laundry, and she provided 
ten thousand clean shirts for these sufferers, and 
had taken absolute command of the whole estab- 
lishment, as the government had given her 
authority to do. In six months, great re- 
sources being sent to her from home, great num- 
bers of recruits to her nurses arriving, every sol- 
dier, to the number of six thousand in the Bar- 
racks Hospital and in the General Hospital at 
Scutari, was being well and comfortably taken 
care of and provided for. 

Then came all the other horrors that attend 
war. Fever broke out, and the frost-bitten men 
who had lain in the trenches before Sebastopol 
were brought in, after spending five days out of 
seven in those horrible trenches, exposed to the 
Crimean frost, with nothing but the linen clothes 
that they had worn in Malta. All these ghastly 
things she had to take care of and provide for, 
but her genius was equal to the emergency. Her 
powers of organization, her powers of endurance 
seem to me to surpass those of any other woman 
on record. They tell us that for twenty hours at 

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FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

a time she would stand when the ships arrived — 
twenty honrs at a time — receiving those broken 
fragments of men that came from the front, see- 
ing that they were properly handled and cared 
for. And when all the work of the day was done 
and others rested she made her rounds, visiting 
the worst cases, the most frightful cases. They 
weren't safe, she thought, unless she personally 
visited them. She, the Lady in Chief, as she was 
ordinarily called, and ' ' The Lady of the Lamp, ' y 
as she became known in poetry and history, vis- 
ited the bedsides of the suffering, soothed the 
wounded and dying. She wrote letters to their 
friends at home, and did everything that one 
woman could do to restore life and light to the 
suffering. Let me read you Longfellow's tribute 
to her: 

On England 's annals, through the long 
Hereafter of her speech and song, 

That light its rays shall east 

From the portals of the past. 

A lady with a lamp shall stand 
In the great history of the land, 

A noble type of good, 

Heroic Womanhood. 

Then she went on from Scutari to the Crimea. 
She went so far as to visit Sebastopol itself, go- 
ing to the very front, and not only looked into 
the trenches, but entered the great crater of that 

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FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

vast volcano of war; and on her way back she 
was stricken with the Crimean fever and very 
nearly lost her life. They carried her to the hos- 
pital — one of those improvised hospitals on the 
heights of Balaklava, five hundred feet above the 
sea. She was nursed for weeks and weeks, 
and finally brought back to life. They tell 
us of the Six Hundred at Balaklava: that " into 
the jaws of death rode the six hundred ! ' ' Why, 
this woman was in the jaws of death from the time 
she landed at Scutari until she was stricken down, 
eight months afterwards. 

Then they said, " You must go home to Eng- 
land; that is the only way for you to get well." 
" I will not go home," she replied, " I will not 
leave these soldiers ; ' ' and she continued her he- 
roic duties of nursing and supervising. She was 
a great genius in every sense of the word. She 
would not go home, and did not go, until not only 
the war had closed, but until long after; until 
every soldier had been shipped home to England, 
and every hospital was cleared. 

And then, how do you think she went home? 
she, the foremost woman in the world now! to 
whom all mankind and womankind looked with 
reverence and honor. How do you think she went 
home? Did she go with a flare of trumpets'? Did 
she expect or wait for a grand demonstration on 
her return? Did she notify everybody or any- 
body that she was coming? Not at all. She had 
such a horror of publicity, she was so modest, so 
meek — one of those that are going to inherit the 

355 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

earth — that she went home incognito. She ar- 
rived in England without letting anybody know it. 
She managed somehow or other to get into the 
back door of her father's house in Derbyshire, 
and the first that was known of her having re- 
turned to England was when the neighbors heard 
that Miss Florence was really sleeping in her 
father's house. Punch, always quick to respond 
to public feeling, reflected the sentiment of the 
hour with respect to her return. Punch says 
this: 

Then leave her to the guide she has chosen ; 

She demands no greeting from our brazen throats and 

vulgar clapping hands. 
Leave her to the sole comfort the saints know that have 

striven ; 
What are our earthly honors : her honors are in heaven ! 

Earthly honors awaited her. In truth the 
whole nation was up in arms to do her honor, to 
pay homage to her, and to make some reward for 
her wonderful sacrifice and services. Subscrip- 
tions were opened, not only in all parts of Eng- 
land, but in all the English dominions, extending 
all around the British Empire. Subscriptions were 
actually opened among the English residents at 
Hong Kong, and fifty thousand pounds was 
poured out by the English people into her lap. 
England is full of generosity to her heroes and 
heroines. She rewards her great generals with 
munificent sums; and so her people in this case 

356 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

wanted in like manner to honor this heroine of 
their own. 

What did she say? She said, " Not for me ; not 
one penny for me. I will not take a penny. But 
it has been the ambition of my life to establish 
a training school for nurses — the first of its kind 
to be conducted on high and broad and pure meth- 
ods and principles. Let it all be devoted to that, 
and I accept the gift. Otherwise, not." And so 
it came about that the first great nurse's train- 
ing school was established at St. Thomas's Hos- 
pital, which bears her name. It is still supported 
by ' ' The Nightingale Fund, ' ' and is a model and 
example for all the training schools of the world. 

Colonel Hoff has told you of her subsequent 
life. Practically her health was ruined. She has 
been fifty-five years an invalid, often confined to 
her bed, and yet always working for the good of 
humanity, always for the relief of the sick and 
wounded, the sanitation of camps and the relief 
and succor of the soldiers. 

But she has had her reward ; through all ranks 
of mankind, wherever there is a heart to beat in 
response to such noble deed as hers, there has 
been a glorious answer. 

I will only speak for a few minutes of those 
things in which we are especially interested and 
first of the Red Cross. The convention that met 
in Geneva, in 1863, founded it, and it has from 
time to time since been the subject of subsequent 
amendment. Our Hague Conference, in 1907, had 
representatives from forty-four nations, and 

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FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

there for the first time all the nations of the 
world became parties to the Red Cross movement, 
which meant the saving of the sick and wounded, 
and hospital and ambulance corps to rescue them 
from all the perils of war and of battle; which 
meant preparation for war while yet there is 
peace, so that these horrible sufferings that have 
been witnessed at the outbreak of almost every 
war may not be repeated. At the meeting of the 
Congress of Red Cross Societies, held in London 
two years later, in June, 1909, unanimous resolu- 
tions were passed, honoring Miss Nightingale and 
declaring that her work was the beginning of the 
Red Cross activities. 

Then look at her influence in America ! When 
our terrible Civil War broke out we were almost 
as unprepared in this matter of sanitation and 
nursing as the British had been at Scutari. For- 
tunately there were some women who lent their 
aid at once, and these were inspired by the exam- 
ple of Miss Nightingale. They were women of 
the same type. Let me read you the names of 
some of them. One, at least, is present here to- 
night, and I do not know but there are more. Dr. 
Elizabeth Blackwell, the intimate friend of Miss 
Nightingale is, I believe, still living in England, 
one year younger than Miss Nightingale herself; 
Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler, Miss Dorothea L. Dix, 
Miss Collins, and Mrs. Griffin. What did they do? 
Why they were responsible, really, for our great 
sanitary commission, and they formed the wom- 
an's branch of that great humanitarian enter- 

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FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

prise, which did so much to save our sick and 
wounded in that protracted and terrible war. 
They acknowledged their allegiance to Miss 
Nightingale, and were in constant correspondence 
with her. Dr. Blackwell had known absolutely 
all her methods, her principles, and her whole 
plan of nursing, and it was on those principles 
and those lines that our noble women worked. 

Then, ten years afterwards, there came the 
foundation of this work in America, I might al- 
most say, the foundation of the training school 
for nurses — at Bellevue Hospital. And there 
you find several of the same women again : Miss 
Schuyler, Miss Collins, Mrs. William Preston 
Griffin, and leading them was Mrs. Joseph Hob- 
son, afterwards president of one of the commit- 
tees; and there was the mother of our present 
chairman, that woman of sainted memory, Mrs. 
William H. Osborn, who led their activities in 
the creation of that great school. It is a splendid 
thing that he should be here to-night to represent 
one who gave so much of her heart, her soul, her 
life and her treasure, to the building up of that 
school. Miss Nightingale was immediately ap- 
proached by the founders of that school, and gave 
them full written instructions as to how they 
ought to proceed. 

Her letter ought to be read by everybody ; it is 
full, explicit, and detailed, and she is as much en- 
titled to the credit of the creation of this school 
in America as even those ladies of whom I have 
spoken. 

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FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 

Now, I close as I began. Do not let us separate 
to-night without authorizing our chairman to 
send, on behalf of all the nurses and all the people 
of America, a word of greeting and of gratitude 
to this noble woman. 



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